Pensions face AI debt risk as Moody's warns there is 'no playbook' for returns

SpaceX is reportedly preparing to issue $40 billion in new debt to buy Nvidia chips for its data centers, according to Bloomberg, sending shares down 2% in early trade Wednesday. The financing would be split into $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt, with Apollo Global leading the financing and bond giant PIMCO looking at the deal. SpaceX's data centers in Memphis, Tennessee, known as Colossus 1 and 2, are generating billions per month in recurring revenue from AI compute services, and CFO Bret Johnsen said last month the company believes it is on track to hit $100 billion in annual recurring revenue, after closing another hosting deal worth about $1.11 billion a month starting December 1st of this year, or roughly $13 billion of additional ARR. Yorkville Ives analyst Dan Ives said the deal provides firepower for SpaceX's AI buildout, adding that the contracted AI backlog and Starlink's cash generation give the company the capacity to service the leverage; Ives has an Outperform rating and a $225 price target on the stock. Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas wrote that SpaceX stock was cheap and that now was the time to buy ahead of the upcoming Starship 15 launch, likely scheduled for late October or November.

Behavox has signed an $8 million GPU commitment with UK sovereign cloud and AI platform Civo to secure dedicated UK capacity for processing regulated customers' sensitive data locally. The agreement covers GPU capacity in the United Kingdom to run the AI models behind Behavox's products, keeping data from global banks, hedge funds, asset managers, commodity traders and insurers within the UK region. It follows Civo's September 22, 2026 announcement of its flagship edge data centre in Hertfordshire, the first of 40 planned UK sites, and its deployment of the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform targeted for 2027, alongside Behavox's $175 million preferred equity investment from HPS Investment Partners, part of BlackRock, in June 2026. The Civo commitment is part of a wider build-out in which Behavox is securing AI compute with other neoclouds amid very strong demand from regulated industries for affordable tokens and agentic AI. That capacity is sold through Behavox's affiliated company Gigatokens, which offers frontier models on UK sovereign infrastructure with zero data retention by default.

The global Data Center Energy Storage Systems Market is projected to grow from USD 5.17 billion in 2026 to USD 10.48 billion by 2032, registering a CAGR of 12.5% during 2026–2032, according to MarketsandMarkets. Growth is driven by rising AI and hyperscale workloads, increasing data center power demand, renewable energy integration, and the need for resilient and flexible power infrastructure. Within the market, supercapacitor energy storage systems are the fastest-growing technology at a 16.5% CAGR, cloud and hyperscale data centers are the fastest-growing data center type at a 14.8% CAGR, and renewable integration and grid services is the fastest-growing application at an 18.3% CAGR. North America is expected to account for the largest regional share, while Asia Pacific is projected to register the highest CAGR. Key players include Tesla, Panasonic Holdings, Samsung SDI, LG Energy Solution, CATL, BYD, Schneider Electric, Vertiv, Eaton, ABB, Siemens Energy, Delta Electronics, Hitachi Energy, Fluence, and Saft.

SpaceX is seeking to issue $40 billion in new debt to purchase Nvidia chips for data centers, according to Bloomberg. The financing would be split into $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment grade debt, with Pimco reportedly looking at the deal and Apollo leading the financing. The company is said to be targeting a 2027 completion date for the raise. The debt would fund additional Nvidia hardware for SpaceX's Colossus 2 data center in Tennessee, which already runs 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 Grace Blackwell 300s, with another 220,000 Grace Blackwell 300s coming online and a further 220,000 expected in November.

NTT DATA opened the NTT DATA AI Factory Munich, a live production-grade environment where clients can validate their own AI applications at scale before committing to broad deployments. The facility operates inside NTT Global Data Centers' Munich 2 Data Center, letting clients evaluate AI workloads against the infrastructure, security, data, governance and operational requirements they will face in production, rather than in a traditional demonstration or innovation lab. The AI Factory Munich draws on NTT DATA's consulting, infrastructure, AI platform, managed services and data center capabilities alongside partners including NVIDIA, which provides an accelerated computing platform with NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, and Dell Technologies, which provides a full-stack AI foundation of AI-optimized servers, storage and services through the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. At the opening ceremony, client CxOs and other participants saw orchestration, sovereignty and data-residency controls in action, along with demonstrations of client use cases in banking, manufacturing and healthcare. The AI Factory Munich is part of NTT DATA's global network of client resources for exploring, developing and deploying advanced technologies, and is open to enterprise and public sector organisations by appointment through their NTT DATA account team or the company's website.

Sterling Infrastructure shares have rebounded 12.2% over the past month, outpacing a 1.4% decline in the Zacks Engineering - R and D Services industry, a 3.2% dip in the Zacks Construction sector, and a 1.2% gain in the S&P 500. The rally is underpinned by the company's E-Infrastructure segment, where second-quarter 2026 revenues surged 192% year over year on mission-critical work including data centers and semiconductor campuses, with adjusted operating income up 148% and margins near 24%. Signed backlog reached $4.33 billion at June 30, 2026, up 116% year over year, while combined backlog rose 150% to $5.62 billion, and total visibility across signed backlog, unsigned awards, and future phases exceeded $7 billion. Second-quarter revenues rose 90% to $1.17 billion and adjusted earnings per share jumped 116% to $5.80, prompting the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 EPS to rise to $20.02 from $19.54 over the past 60 days. Risks remain in Transportation Solutions, where revenues fell 20% and full-year segment revenues are expected to decline 7-10%, and in Building Solutions, where revenues slipped 1% amid weak housing affordability.