Who's Actually Paying for the AI Boom?

Black Box Theory Podcast · Jul 17, 2026 · 4m · transcript

Everyone's watching the AI models. Almost nobody's watching how the whole thing gets paid for. In this clip we follow the money.

Malcolm and Thomas break down the massive, fast-rising spend on AI infrastructure — the compute, the data centers, the networking that all of this runs on — and then get into the part that should give you pause: how much of it is being funded with debt. They get into GPU-backed loans, why borrowing against chips is a whole new kind of risk, and what it means for the boom if the returns don't show up fast enough to cover the bill.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 — Rapid…