Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon said deal demand remains robust, with investors “still focused on the trajectory of AI demand, compute demand and capital markets are open and receiving,” Bloomberg reported on 3 November from a Hong Kong summit. That report came 38 minutes after Bloomberg reported that Pimco chief executive Emmanuel Roman sees AI-related financing growing to about $10 trillion over five years and eventually reaching excessive levels.
State Street chief executive Ron O’Hanley told Bloomberg Television it is “hard to see” AI as a bubble yet, because “there’s real orders behind them.” A day earlier, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett called AI “a really well-financed ecosystem” in a CNBC interview, Bloomberg reported.
The two bank chiefs speak for bigger books than Roman. According to their filings, State Street managed $6.31 trillion at 30 September and Goldman supervised $4.10 trillion, against Pimco’s $2.29 trillion. Over the year to 30 September, Goldman’s supervised assets rose about 18.7% and Pimco’s about 4.1%, by our arithmetic; State Street reported a 15.8% rise in assets under management.
Business Pill · Financial Conditions
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on financial conditions: several prices, such as rates, spreads and share prices, pulling at once. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Goldman, State Street, Pimco or the people quoted here.
The key insight: Goldman’s David Solomon told Bloomberg Television that deal demand remains robust, State Street’s Ron O’Hanley said real orders stand behind data centres, and the White House’s Kevin Hassett called AI a well-financed ecosystem. Their firms supervise or manage $4.10 trillion and $6.31 trillion, against $2.29 trillion at Pimco, whose chief executive Emmanuel Roman sees AI financing reaching excessive levels, Bloomberg reported.
Solomon said a technology supercycle will dominate capital markets and financing activity as deal demand remains robust, Bloomberg reported. He spoke in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit. Bloomberg’s headline put his view as “very robust” demand for AI deals.
At the same summit, Solomon said demand for compute currently exceeds supply and that long-term value will likely shift toward the application layer, according to The Standard, a Hong Kong newspaper.
Goldman’s own third-quarter release gives the deal desk’s numbers. Investment banking fees were $3.22 billion, 21% higher than a year earlier, and debt underwriting revenue rose mainly on investment-grade activity. The same release says the firm’s investment banking fees backlog decreased compared with the end of June and decreased slightly compared with the end of 2025. The release does not split either figure by AI deals.
Assets managed or supervised by the firms of three chief executives quoted this week, 30 September 2025 and 30 September 2026, in trillions of dollars: State Street $5.45 trillion to $6.31 trillion of assets under management (company-reported rise 15.8%); Goldman Sachs $3.45 trillion to $4.10 trillion of assets under supervision (preliminary; about 18.7%, our arithmetic); Pimco about $2.20 trillion to about $2.29 trillion of assets under management (about 4.1%, our arithmetic), from Pimco fund filings with the SEC. The measures differ and are not added. Labels quote Bloomberg’s headlines and reports.
State Street: “Real Orders Behind Them”
O’Hanley said demand is supporting the investment being poured into the technology, Bloomberg reported. He told Bloomberg Television’s David Ingles and Yvonne Man: “It’s not like these data centers are being built on spec. I mean, there’s real orders behind them, and in most cases, there’s real companies behind them.” He added: “So right now, it’s hard to see that’s a bubble.”
State Street’s larger figure is custody. Its third-quarter release puts assets under custody or administration at $59.17 trillion on 30 September, 14.5% more than a year earlier, alongside the $6.31 trillion it manages.
Hassett: “Well-Financed Ecosystem”
Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, spoke on CNBC on 2 November after a week in which a fall in technology shares sent the Nasdaq Composite to its lowest since July, Bloomberg reported. He accepted that there are “some companies that maybe have a lot of debt, and you kind of worry about” that. But, he said, “there are really, really big-pocketed companies sort of lurking all over the place, owning the equity, owning the debt, perhaps willing to pounce if somebody has trouble.”
“There’s so much cash in the ecosystem that I think that people should be reassured,” Hassett said, according to Bloomberg. “But I don’t think that there’s a risk of a wholesale selloff at all.”
The Warners, Same Days
The other side was reported in the same two days. In Pimco CEO Sees $10T of AI Financing; CPPIB Flags Exposure, we reported Roman’s estimate of about $2 trillion of financing needs a year, against a US bond market he put at about $12 trillion. Xiao Yuanqi, a vice head of China’s financial regulator, called global AI investment “overly concentrated” at the same Hong Kong summit, Reuters reported.
The ECB’s vice-president listed high valuations for AI stocks among its main risks, and CPPIB’s David Colla warned of “bubble-like” exuberance.
As we read The Standard’s account, Morgan Stanley chief executive Ted Pick sat between the two camps. He put AI’s capital needs at $10 trillion to $15 trillion over a decade and called periodic corrections “very healthy”. He also said some projects with poor capital structures “will eventually not pass the test of time.”
Update, 3 Nov: more voices from the Hong Kong summit. Blackstone President Jon Gray said the AI infrastructure build-out will need more equity financing as lenders become increasingly exposed to the companies driving it, CNBC reported from the same summit. He said the scale of capital required is creating concentration risks for debt investors, both across the sector and at individual companies, and that lenders have limited upside because their returns are largely confined to interest and principal. “The creativity is needed because the scale of capital is enormous,” Gray said, adding that demand for computing power was “running well ahead of supply.” Reuters quoted him: “Meta and Google and Oracle raising equity … SpaceX going public, Anthropic going public,” and “the overall trend is towards greater investment and therefore more needs for multiple forms of capital.” As we read it, Gray takes a third position between the bulls and the warners above: the demand is real, but how it is funded, with more equity and less concentrated debt, is the open question.
On the same panel, CNBC reported, Pimco’s Emmanuel Roman said about $550 billion of AI debt had been issued in various forms so far this year, and compared the amount required with a global corporate bond market of roughly $20 trillion: “At some point in time, it’s going to be too much.” Goldman’s Solomon said strong companies with “good stories” would still be able to raise capital, but “things will go wrong too, and we’ll get things wrong,” Reuters reported, and Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick flagged early signs of US markets edging close to a correction. CNBC’s headline on a CNBC interview with EQT chair Jean Eric Salata quoted him calling partnering with hyperscalers in AI cloud a “pretty safe bet”; CNBC’s summary tied that to their deep capital. Bloomberg summed up the day as some of the world’s biggest asset managers “sounding the alarm about risks to the artificial intelligence boom, even as Wall Street’s top CEOs talk up the potential windfall.”
What the Market Priced the Same Week
The bond market put a price on the same flow of money. In Oracle Prices $10B of Bonds at Spreads Up to 175bp Over Feb, we found that Oracle now pays 145 to 175 basis points more over Treasuries than in February, at the four maturities in both sales, by our arithmetic from its term sheets. In Self-Funded vs Market-Funded AI, we set out Oracle’s 2 November filings to sell $10 billion of stock and $10 billion of notes.
Big Tech’s own spending outlooks are still rising. In Big Tech and SpaceX Guide Q4 Capex Up to $270B, Above Q3, the five companies’ own outlooks came to about $241.6 billion to $270.0 billion for the fourth quarter, above the $228.3 billion they reported for the third, by our arithmetic.
Connecting the Coverage
Goldman’s internal AI policy also moved this week. In Goldman Limits Claude Code, GitHub to Its 12,000 Engineers, we reported Bloomberg’s account that the bank limited those coding tools to its engineers after a review of productivity and risk concerns.
What is new here is that, between 2 and 3 November, three senior figures in finance and government said AI’s money is backed by demand or by capital, while four others warned about its size or concentration. As we read it, both camps describe the same build-out.
The Structural Read
As we read the remarks, the two camps look at different ends of the same flow of money. The bank chiefs and Hassett describe the demand side: orders, deal flow and cash. The warners describe the funding side: the size of the debt and where it is concentrated.
As we read the filings, neither side has to be wrong for both to be right in part. Goldman’s investment banking fees rose 21% from a year earlier while its fees backlog decreased from the end of June, and Oracle now pays more to borrow than in February, by our arithmetic from its term sheets.
Ron O’Hanley, State Street, to Bloomberg Television, 3 Nov 2026
“It’s not like these data centers are being built on spec. I mean, there’s real orders behind them, and in most cases, there’s real companies behind them.”
Three Implications
FOR READING THE BULLS Solomon and O’Hanley run firms with $4.10 trillion and $6.31 trillion of client assets, and Goldman’s investment banking fees were $3.22 billion in the third quarter; the filings we read do not say how much of either comes from AI.
FOR READING THE WARNERS Roman put AI financing needs at about $2 trillion a year, as Bloomberg reported it; Solomon, O’Hanley and Hassett gave no figure for the size of AI financing in the text we read.
FOR THE SPENDING Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and SpaceX’s own outlooks put fourth-quarter capex at about $241.6 billion to $270.0 billion, above the third quarter, by our arithmetic in our earlier piece. As we read it, that is the spending both camps are describing.
The framework reads: “The $1T capex cycle is being underwritten by a $1T concentrated demand commitment from two counterparties whose combined free cash flow is deeply negative”.
As we read it, that is the question behind O’Hanley’s “real orders”: an order is only as strong as the buyer who signs it. The framework was published in May 2026 and does not discuss these remarks.
We read the opening paragraphs of Bloomberg’s Solomon and O’Hanley articles, not the full texts. Those paragraphs do not say where O’Hanley gave his interview. Hassett’s words are as reported by Bloomberg; we did not transcribe the CNBC video. Goldman’s asset figure is assets under supervision, a preliminary estimate, while the others are assets under management, so the figures are not added. None of the speakers gave their firm’s own AI exposure in the text we read. We did not contact the people quoted.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Anthropic’s Reality Check, The Capital Squeeze, & The New World Order
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a growthstory. This week it started being priced as a credit story.
Solomon, O’Hanley and Hassett point to demand, orders and cash. Roman, China’s regulator, the ECB and CPPIB point to the size and concentration of the financing. As we read it, both camps are describing the same pipeline of money from different ends: the order book on one side, the debt that funds it on the other.
A note on sourcing. Solomon’s and O’Hanley’s remarks are from the opening paragraphs of Bloomberg’s 3 November articles; Solomon’s summit remarks and Pick’s are as reported by The Standard. Hassett’s remarks are as reported by Bloomberg (full text via Yahoo Finance). Asset figures are from Goldman’s and State Street’s third-quarter releases and Pimco fund filings with the SEC. Percentage changes for Goldman and Pimco are our arithmetic; the asset measures differ and are not added.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
