BlackRock Inc

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation announced the DTCC tokenization service on May 4, 2026, a platform designed to bring Russell 1000 components, ETFs, and US Treasuries onto distributed ledgers. With over 50 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Circle, Ondo, and Nasdaq participating, the service moved into limited production in July 2026 following a December 2025 SEC No-Action Letter. DTCC CEO Frank La Salla said tokenization will significantly change how markets operate by bringing new levels of liquidity, transparency, and efficiency to investors, while Brian Steele of the DTCC added that the service is designed to provide systemic scale where deep liquidity already lives. The infrastructure shift extends beyond the DTCC: Nasdaq secured SEC approval on March 18, 2026, under Release 34-105047, to facilitate tokenized settlement on the same order book, ticker, and CUSIP as traditional assets, NYSE Arca followed with rule change SR-NYSEARCA-2026-45 effective April 29, 2026, and the broader NYSE received approval for its own related filings on April 17, 2026. The SEC issued a five-year conditional innovation exemption on September 17, 2026, specifically for tokenized NMS stocks, while the CFTC clarified through Staff Letter 25-39 and an updated FAQ on September 24, 2026, that tokenized collateral may be used for derivatives margin. The tokenized asset market tracked by rwa.xyz stood at approximately $38.6 billion as of late September 2026, up from $2 billion in 2022, with tokenized Treasuries accounting for $14.7 billion to $15.65 billion of that total, led by BlackRock's BUIDL at $2.70 billion, Circle's USYC at $2.60 billion, and Ondo's USDY at $2.23 billion. A June 1, 2026, Citi report estimates a base case of $5.5 trillion in tokenized assets and $1.9 trillion in stablecoins by 2030, though it warns of a messy period in which tokenized and legacy systems operate side by side.

BlackRock has significantly expanded its Bitcoin holdings after a month of consistent inflows through its Bitcoin funds, with more than $1.5 billion in Bitcoin now topping the asset manager's holdings. The leading asset management firm built the position over that one-month stretch of steady inflows into its Bitcoin funds. The figure marks the scale of BlackRock's Bitcoin exposure following the sustained buying.

The OUSD stablecoin has officially gone live with Visa, Mastercard and Stripe behind it, according to Scott Melker on "The Daily Wolf with Scott Melker." OUSD, or Open USD, is a consortium of fintechs and payment companies launching their own stablecoin to compete in a massive market where high interest rates generate essentially free money, and it is being run by Stripe, which acquired Bridge in a unicorn deal and whose Bridge CEO is also running the blockchain. The stablecoin is launching on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base and Tempo, with the bulk of liquidity expected on Stripe's own Tempo blockchain, while reserves will be held at BlackRock, BNY and Lead Bank. Five founding members — Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa — will split the equity and have invested a billion dollars for initial liquidity, and depending on usage they will accrue more or less equity or earnings from the stablecoin, meaning earnings accrue to the companies promoting and using it rather than to a private company behind it. The launch follows a huge debate when it was announced, as 140 logos appeared including BlackRock and others, and some companies said they had never heard of it and had not gotten the memo.

U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $17.1 million in net inflows on September 28, extending their consecutive inflow streak to seven trading sessions, with cumulative net inflows reaching about $835 million and the $850 million mark now in sight. The seven-session streak includes a $143.7 million inflow on September 18, followed by inflows of $270 million, $162.2 million, $104.5 million, $66.1 million, $87 million and $1.7 million in subsequent sessions, with BlackRock's ETHA accounting for $15.4 million and 21Shares' TETH for $1.7 million most recently. On September 29, Ethereum rose about 1% to $2,745 as traders increased exposure across perpetual futures markets, with open interest up roughly $700 million and total liquidations reaching $83.17 million, of which longs accounted for $38.16 million and shorts $45.01 million. Ethereum's next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, is scheduled to go live on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, with mainnet launch targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026 though no firm date has been set, and it includes enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and a revamp of gas fee pricing. The on-chain economy is also expanding: Ethereum DeFi total value locked rose from about $42 billion on August 19 to $53.65 billion on September 28, an increase of roughly $11.5 billion, or 27.4%, in about six weeks; the circulating value of tokenized equities reached about $3.14 billion, up about 947% from roughly $300 million in September 2025; and the circulating value of tokenized U.S. Treasuries reached $14.72 billion, doubling over the past year.

A consortium backed by BlackRock and IFM Investors has entered exclusive talks to acquire Stack Infrastructure's Asia-Pacific data centres from Blue Owl Capital in a potential US$20.00–US$25.00 billion deal, with due diligence under way and no agreement yet finalized. The move sits alongside BlackRock's expanded AI Infrastructure Partnership and its major Aligned Data Centres acquisition, underlining how aggressively the firm is building an AI-focused data centre footprint across regions. BlackRock's narrative projects $36.2 billion in revenue and $10.8 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 9.9% yearly revenue growth and roughly a $4.2 billion earnings increase from $6.6 billion today. Five members of the Simply Wall St Community currently place BlackRock's fair value between US$1,140.65 and US$1,323.31, against a $1323 fair value estimate implying 24% upside to its current price. Investors are also weighing the risk that expanding private markets and AI infrastructure exposure raises integration and cost pressures that could affect BlackRock's ability to sustain its current earnings profile.

Traders are piling into options tied to fixed-income ETFs at a record pace as yields on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries sit at the highest in two decades. Options trading volume on BlackRock Inc.'s iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF, ticker TLT, is soaring, with the 20-day average hitting the highest level ever for the exchange-traded fund, while open interest has more than doubled over the past year and is closing in on the record of 13.55 million contracts reached prior to monthly expiration last week. Implied volatility and the premium for bearish puts on TLT have jumped to the highest since late March as investors pay up for protection against, or for wagers on, higher yields. The spike in options volumes over the last week has extended to BlackRock's iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF, LQD, and the firm's iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, HYG. Steve Laipply, global co-head of BlackRock's iShares Fixed Income ETFs, said options on those exposures are becoming increasingly popular because they provide access to exposures that would be difficult to replicate efficiently in the underlying bond market, and Alex Kosoglyadov, head of flow equity derivative sales at Nomura Holdings, said traditional equity investors are starting to look more and more at these rate products.

OTCX Trading Limited has gone live with its integration into BlackRock's Aladdin platform, giving mutual clients direct access to OTCX's electronic execution capabilities for interest rate swaps as part of the first phase of the multi-year technology partnership announced in October 2025. The launch means institutional investors can now use OTCX for price discovery, request-for-market workflows, trade execution and post-trade processing through seamless FIX integration, all from within Aladdin. OTCX said the integration streamlines OTC derivatives trading workflows from price discovery through to execution and post-trade processing, as demand for electronic trading grows across OTC markets and firms seek operational efficiency while preserving access to dealer liquidity. OTCX operates regulated execution venues connecting buy-side and sell-side participants in cleared and uncleared derivatives.

Private credit funds showed signs of stabilizing in September as redemption requests from individual investors eased and investment performance improved after a difficult start to the year, the Financial Times reported Sunday. Flagship funds managed by Apollo Global, Ares and BlackRock reported lower withdrawal requests in the third quarter, while redemptions at Blackstone's large private credit fund held roughly steady. Ares Strategic Income Fund said investors requested withdrawals equal to 13.1% of shares during the third quarter, down from 14.4% in the prior period, while at Apollo's roughly $15 billion flagship debt fund redemption requests fell to 14.7% from 16.8%. Requests at BlackRock's HPS corporate lending fund declined to 11.5% from 13.3%, while Blackstone's $43 billion flagship private credit vehicle held steady at about 10%. Across 13 non-traded business development companies that have reported third-quarter results, investors requested $9.6 billion in withdrawals, or 10.1% of fund value, down from 11.2% in the second quarter, according to RA Stanger. Despite the improvement, the four vehicles fulfilled less than half of requested withdrawals on average as redemption limits remained in place, and limited inflows and constrained asset growth could keep management-fee expansion weak while softer performance is expected to reduce incentive fees.

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds extended their inflow streak, adding $347 million even as Bitcoin dropped below the $84,000 level. BlackRock led the fresh wave of inflows into the funds. The inflows mark a continued run of positive flows for cryptocurrency-linked exchange-traded products despite the price decline in the underlying asset.

BlackRock predicts agentic AI could become an underappreciated source of demand for digital assets, arguing in a September report titled The Machine-Native Economy that AI agents transacting independently will need machine-native payment rails built on stablecoins, native cryptocurrencies and other onchain assets. The asset manager said existing systems such as card networks and ACH can be less suited to always-on, low-value and programmable transactions, and cited Bitcoin Policy Institute simulations in which AI models generally favored stablecoins for everyday payments and Bitcoin for long-term value preservation, while cautioning the findings reflect simulated rather than actual agent behavior. The thesis is meeting real-world experimentation: Meta and PayPal announced on Sept. 22 that users will be able to shop and check out with Meta's Muse AI agent across PayPal's merchant network worldwide. Muse, launched Sept. 8, can book travel, fill out forms and make purchases after user approval, and quickly rose to the top of Apple's App Store rankings among free apps. PayPal also operates PayPal USD, its dollar-backed stablecoin, which became available across 70 markets in March, though neither company has said PYUSD will be used for Muse purchases. The news comes as Bitcoin climbed above $86,000 this week, its highest level in eight months, up about 8.8% in September after gaining roughly 25% in August, with Ether, XRP and other major altcoins also strengthening.

Bitcoin climbed to $87,395 during September 21-22, its highest level since January 2026, buoyed by institutional buying, short squeezes, and macroeconomic factors favorable to risk assets. Institutional demand was evident in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, which saw net inflows of $998.95 million on September 21 alone, the largest single-day inflow of the year, with BlackRock and Fidelity among the asset managers bringing money into the market. Meanwhile, short liquidations totaled roughly $648 million over the 24 hours in which prices rose. Bitcoin had earlier fallen from a peak above $126,000 in October 2025 and traded between the mid-$70,000s and the low $80,000s in September 2026, leaving the $100,000 target looking distant. Jeff Kendrick, an analyst at Standard Chartered, is keeping his bitcoin price target at $100,000 by year-end and sees that target as potentially too conservative, while prediction market Kalshi reflects a significantly higher probability that bitcoin will break $100,000 before January 1, 2027. However, macroeconomic conditions remain fluid, and the U.S. Treasury bond market and oil price factors that supported bitcoin this week could reverse.

BlackRock-backed Vanguard Renewables is acquiring Generate Upcycle's North American organics recycling operations, expanding Vanguard Renewables' network of organics recycling facilities across the US and Canada. The deal adds further exposure for BlackRock to organics recycling and renewable energy infrastructure through its interest in Vanguard Renewables. BlackRock, a US-based investment manager with a market value of about $177.1b, gains that additional exposure through its backing of Vanguard Renewables, which sits within its broader capital markets and infrastructure footprint. The move reinforces the view that BlackRock is building breadth across real assets, following private markets acquisitions such as HPS Investment Partners, GIP and ElmTree, as it competes with Brookfield and KKR in infrastructure. Analysts also flag complexity, cost and execution risk in private markets, since each additional infrastructure pocket adds capital needs, operational exposure and potential regulatory scrutiny around environmental projects.

US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded total net inflows of $998.95 million on Monday, the highest value since October 6, 2025, and the ninth-largest inflow since these funds began trading on January 11, 2024. The inflows were led by BlackRock's IBIT at $381.37 million, followed by Ark's ARKB at $289.12 million and Fidelity's FBTC at $238.84 million. The inflows marked the first three-day streak in two weeks and came just days after Bitcoin was hit by the Senate's failure to pass a cloture vote on the Clarity Act and by the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike. The inflows brought the month-to-date total to $1.31 billion, following August's $3.52 billion, while Bitcoin's price surged 44% to $85,000 this quarter, outperforming all other major assets including gold. However, spot ETFs remain down $450 million year-to-date.

BlackRock shares closed at $1,090.27, up 1.92% and outpacing the S&P 500's 1.49% gain, though the stock is down 7.5% over the past month. Ahead of its upcoming earnings report, the company is forecast to post earnings of $14.24 per share, up 23.29% from a year earlier, on revenue of $7.44 billion, a 14.26% increase. For the full year, consensus estimates project earnings of $55.96 per share and revenue of $28.82 billion, representing gains of 16.37% and 19.02% respectively. The consensus EPS estimate has risen 0.59% over the past month, and BlackRock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold). The stock trades at a forward P/E of 19.12 versus an industry average of 11.2, and at a PEG ratio of 1.18 against the Financial - Investment Management industry's 1.07.

SCB WEALTH and SCBAM hosted the Exclusive Investment Talk: The Next Move, reading the market and pointing to investment solutions for every condition. They view AI as still driving the global economy amid volatility from the Middle East war, and recommend that investors diversify risk through two standout funds, SCBGMCORE(A) and SCBGOFIX(A). Piyapat Pattarapuwadol, Director of the Investment Strategy Department at SCB Asset Management, or SCBAM, said the International Monetary Fund estimates global economic growth this year at 3%, only slightly lower than its previous forecast, and expects growth to pick up in 2027. The global economy is still supported by investment in AI-related computing infrastructure, while risks remain from the Middle East war, which affects energy supply chains and pressures inflation, influencing the direction of US Federal Reserve monetary policy. Nawarat Jiamkitrung, Director of the Investment Product Development Department at SCBAM, said SCBAM has partnered with BlackRock to develop a solution for core portfolios through the SCBGMCORE(A) fund, which carries a risk level of 5. It is a mixed fund investing across a range of global assets, including equities, fixed income, and liquid alternative assets, dividing the portfolio into three parts: a Diversified ETF Core, Liquid Alternatives, and a Volatility Control strategy, which is a proprietary model exclusive to BlackRock. Meanwhile, investors who cannot accept high risk have the option of the SCBGOFIX(A) fund, a fixed income fund with a risk level of 4 that invests 100% in fixed income instruments, managed by BlackRock's global fixed income fund manager team, which oversees more than 1.1 trillion US dollars in assets.

TotalEnergies has agreed a $1.8 billion infrastructure partnership with Global Infrastructure Partners, a BlackRock unit, focused on African oil and gas assets. The transaction centers on midstream infrastructure and gives TotalEnergies additional access to capital tied to its African energy projects. Under the arrangement, management is effectively swapping full ownership of some African midstream assets for upfront cash and a throughput-based payment obligation over up to 15 years, bringing in US$1.8 billion without issuing equity while keeping operational control of the wider projects. Management presented the deal as a way to crystallize value in existing assets while refining how future projects are funded and managed, with the proceeds potentially directed toward LNG, power and exploration priorities. The key test for investors will be how quickly TotalEnergies discloses where the US$1.8 billion is going, including capex allocations to Angolan blocks, LNG projects or the Mistral AI program over the next 12 to 24 months.

Meta Platforms raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure guidance to a range of $130 billion to $145 billion, including principal payments on finance leases, narrowed from a prior $125 billion to $145 billion range in its Q2 2026 report on July 29, 2026. The forward guidance nearly doubles Meta's full-year 2025 capex of $72.215 billion, and Q2 capital expenditures alone reached $31.1 billion, driven by servers, data centers, and network infrastructure. To fund the build, Meta ended Q2 with $90.3 billion in cash and marketable securities and $83.7 billion in debt, and announced a strategic venture with BlackRock to develop a one gigawatt data center in El Paso, Texas. CFO Susan Li said Meta is demand constrained today, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is receiving quite a number of offers at a meaningful premium over what we paid for the compute, framing direct compute sales as one leg of a portfolio that also includes APIs, business agents, productivity tools, and subscriptions. The strain is visible in the quarterly numbers: Q2 free cash flow was $784 million, down 91.31% year over year, and operating margin compressed to 31% from 43%, even as Q2 revenue reached $60.801 billion, up 27.96% year over year and above the $60.286 billion consensus, with advertising revenue of $59.4 billion, up 27%.

BlackRock is increasingly positioning itself as one of the largest Ethereum holding firms as recent data shows that it is rapidly expanding its Ethereum holdings. The asset manager's Ethereum position now stands at $1.5 billion, according to the report. The move underscores BlackRock's continued buildout of digital-asset exposure beyond its spot Bitcoin products.

Krungthai Asset Management Public Company Limited, or KTAM, has announced the renaming of the KTAM US 500 Open-End Fund (KT-US500) to the KTAM S&P 500 Open-End Fund (KT-S&P500) to reflect its investment policy of tracking the S&P 500 Index. Chavinda Hanratanakool, Managing Director, said KTAM is the first asset management company in Thailand to be granted rights to use the S&P 500 trademark and index, as of 31 August 2026. The KT-S&P500 fund focuses on investing in units of the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, managed by BlackRock Fund Advisors, averaging no less than 80% of NAV over the fiscal year, and offers both an accumulation share class (share class A) and a USD accumulation share class (share class USD) at risk level 6. KTAM views that the US stock market continues to be supported by the strength of the economy, investment in technology and digital infrastructure, and the growth of the AI industry. Analysts expect earnings of companies in the S&P 500 Index to grow 36% in 2026 and 14% in 2027, while valuation levels remain attractive, trading at a P/E of 19.1 times. Data from the master fund as of 10 August 2026 shows investment allocation across five main industry groups: technology at 38.30%, financial services at 12.01%, communication services at 9.69%, consumer discretionary at 9.53%, and healthcare at 9.11%.

Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin has reached approximately $2.345 billion in market cap as of September 16, 2026, a 1,278% year-to-date increase that makes it the third-fastest growing stablecoin of the year, with daily transfer activity tripling since January to $750 million per day by August. Roughly $963 million of the token sits on the XRP Ledger and $1.05 billion on Ethereum. Ripple is pursuing a vertically integrated strategy built on acquisitions rather than validators, including the $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road, now rebranded Ripple Prime, which clears roughly $3 trillion annually and lets RLUSD serve as collateral with zero haircut for over 300 institutional clients, alongside the $1 billion acquisition of GTreasury's treasury management platform, which reaches 1,200 corporate treasurers processing $13 trillion annually. Integrations include a September 2025 partnership with DBS and Franklin Templeton for 24/7 trading of tokenized money market funds, a Securitize link allowing holders of BlackRock BUIDL and VanEck VBILL to swap into RLUSD around the clock, and a Mastercard and WebBank pilot marking the first time a regulated US bank has settled card transactions on a public blockchain using a stablecoin. Ripple holds a New York Department of Financial Services trust company charter and conditional OCC approval, and launched in Japan via SBI under the JFSA's revised Payment Services Act, positioning itself around private-sector consensus and state-level charters after the CLARITY Act failed on September 15. The Federal Reserve Master Account remains the key bottleneck, and expansion into L2 networks via Wormhole NTT is still pending NYDFS approval.

BlackRock and its AI Infrastructure Partnership signed an agreement in August with North America's Building Trades Unions to give unions visibility into the coming project pipeline and to train and deploy the workforce needed to build it, with more than 3 million skilled craft professionals represented across the U.S. and Canada. BlackRock expects the expansion of data centers, power generation and related infrastructure to create hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs, and its separate $100 million Future Builders initiative aims to reach 50,000 workers over five years. For traveling union members, pension contributions made while working outside a home local may stay with the jobsite fund or return home through reciprocal arrangements such as money-follows-the-man, while pro-rata reciprocity can combine service earned under multiple participating funds for eligibility or vesting purposes, with each fund responsible for its share. Social Security instead keeps a single lifetime earnings record regardless of the states worked, using the highest 35 years of indexed earnings, though the Social Security Administration ordinarily limits corrections to an earnings record after three years, three months and 15 days, with important exceptions. The company said workers should confirm how reciprocity works before taking an out-of-area job, keep records from every fund and local, and check their Social Security earnings record against W-2s from every state worked.

Meta Platforms Inc. has elevated Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump administration official and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, to president, vice chairman and co-leader of Meta Compute, the company's effort to build and monetize the infrastructure fueling its artificial intelligence ambitions. Powell McCormick resigned from Meta's board about a week after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg asked her to take the internal role during a December board retreat at his Kauai compound, and she assumed the position in January. Meta is expecting to spend more than $600 billion on its AI buildout before the end of the decade, not including the many billions more it is leveraging from Wall Street. In one benchmark deal, Meta and BlackRock Inc. agreed to build a $14 billion data center in El Paso, Texas, with BlackRock raising more than $12 billion in debt to fund the facility and holding an 80% interest in the joint venture while Meta retains 20%. Meta used a similar joint-venture structure with Blue Owl Capital Inc. to help finance its Louisiana data center, dubbed Hyperion, and NextEra Energy Inc. announced Wednesday it will hire 1,000 people out of Meta's America's Workforce Academy, an initiative Powell McCormick stood up, with Meta investing $115 million in the academy in its first year. Powell McCormick's remit extends to countering public backlash to AI and data centers, weighing in on legal and reputational fights including Meta's settlement of up to $18 billion with state attorneys general over children's safety on Instagram and Facebook, and helping lead a $1 billion fund to invest in communities where Meta builds.

Circle's Arc blockchain went live on September 16, 2026, as an open, EVM-compatible Layer 1 network, one day after the CLARITY Act failed a cloture vote in the U.S. Senate. The network's 12 founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, Mastercard, and ICE, operating as a permissioned environment that Circle positions as institutional-grade settlement infrastructure. Arc uses native USDC as its gas token and launches with a Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism, with a planned evolution to Proof-of-Stake and future staking economics for the ARC token. Circle plans to tokenize DTC-custodied assets on Arc by H2 2027, targeting a DTCC that industry estimates says processes approximately $2.4 quadrillion in securities transactions annually, while BlackRock is expected to deploy its BUIDL fund, valued by industry estimates at over $2 billion, onto the network. The project faces headwinds: the New York Department of Financial Services has not reviewed or approved the network as of the August 2026 announcement, and the small, hand-picked validator set invites centralization concerns.

Anthropic launched Claude for Financial Advisors on September 14, connecting the AI assistant to Charles Schwab, BlackRock and other industry platforms so advisers can pull client and portfolio information into Claude for meeting prep, portfolio review and documentation. Charles Schwab is the first RIA custodian integrated with the offering, and says more than 16,000 independent RIAs will be able to connect Claude to Schwab Advisor Center through an authenticated connection, serving firms with over $5.5 trillion in assets. BlackRock contributes portfolio construction expertise, model portfolios and institutional analytics through Advisor Center, after ending the second quarter with $15.3 trillion in assets under management and posting a 13% year-over-year rise in technology-services and subscription revenue on continued Aladdin momentum. Anthropic says the plugin works across a long list of portfolio systems, CRMs and planning tools, and recommends Enterprise plans with audit logs to meet recordkeeping and compliance obligations. Insider Monkey's database showed 95 hedge funds long SCHW in the second quarter, down from 101 in the first, while BLK holders rose to 84 from 79.

Canadian Prime Minister Carney is aiming to attract investment in more than 160 projects as a key to weathering the trade war with the United States. According to the Prime Minister's Office, Carney, a former Goldman Sachs executive, held one-on-one meetings on the 14th with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Blackstone President Jon Gray, among others. According to government sources, the summit, mainly to be held on the 15th, will feature discussions on future investment, but it could take 12 to 18 months before large-scale deals materialize. Carney has pledged to attract 1 trillion Canadian dollars, or 721 billion US dollars, in investment over the next five years through deregulation and the promotion of mining, energy, technology, and infrastructure projects. At a welcome reception on the 13th, Carney said that some of the world's largest investors, who manage more than 120 trillion Canadian dollars in assets, are now looking at Canada differently than before.

Nvidia is partnering with Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to raise over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure, as Bank of America warns the sector may need about $1.2 trillion of external finance to support AI capital expenditures forecast to exceed $5 trillion between 2026 and 2030. Bank of America says major chip suppliers are taking on an unexpected role as credit intermediaries, helping remove financial risks that make massive AI data centers difficult or expensive to finance through minimum revenue commitments, take-or-pay contracts, and residual value guarantees. Broadcom's AI XPV Platform has secured senior notes and the remaining value of chips covering $31 billion of an initial $35 billion loan package arranged with Apollo and Blackstone, nearly 87% of the debt package, with the guaranteed portion priced at 5.75% against 8.5% for an unsecured second lien. In August, Nvidia said it would provide finance assistance for land, electricity, and construction at SB Energy's PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio, with a first rollout of 4.25 gigawatts of AI factory capacity expected to be used by OpenAI, and Nvidia also said it was investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy. Broadcom on Sept. 2 reported $16.7 billion in AI semiconductor sales for its fiscal third quarter, up 221% from a year earlier, and CEO Hock Tan said the company expects AI semiconductor revenue of about $21.7 billion in its fiscal fourth quarter, an increase of 236% year-over-year.