Oracle and the AI boom’s hidden debt bomb

The old adage goes that during a boom, the companies that profit most are the ones selling the picks and shovels. This January, even as consensus had largely settled around the idea that an AI bubble exists, something even Sam Altman acknowledged last August, Blackstone called investing in the “picks and shovels” of AI a “generational” opportunity. The safer bet, we’re told, lies not in the models themselves but in AI’s physical infrastructure: data centers, chips, and electricity.