OpenAI, Anthropic likely to face a cash-flow wall in 2027: Brookings decode why Wall Street expects AI spending to slow

The artificial intelligence boom is becomingreally expensive to finance, raising questions over how long companies can sustain the current pace of spending. A new Brookings paper by Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh argues that the AI buildout is increasingly moving beyond the cash flows of the companies driving demand. OpenAI, Anthropic rely on hyperscalers' balance sheets The ability to attract outside capital depends heavily on the credit quality of companies contracting for computing capacity, according to Van Nieuwerburgh. But despite being at the centre of the AI boom, “frontier AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic generally lack comparable standalone credit profiles.” And hence, the financial burden of the AI buildout is increasingly being carried by companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle—and by investors financing the…