Even after adjusting for inflation, big tech companies are issuing more bonds than during the late 1990s. And the companies aren't just refinancing existing debt-they're taking on additional debt. "While the increasingly aggressive (and creative) borrowing by AI companies won't be their downfall, if they do fall short of investors' expectations and their stock prices suffer, their debts could quickly become a problem," Zandi wrote.
Well... that happened. PR folks the world over can take a lesson from how Amazon announced the enhancement of its AWS Transform service. They hauled an old AWS server 150 feet up on a crane in the middle of Las Vegas, and then dropped it on a pile of explosives. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you get the attention of tech journalists. I mean, dropping a server 150 feet and blowing it up is a happy place I didn't even know I had.
According to some estimates, tech debt, or the costs incurred when having to constantly fix aging or clunky software systems, has ballooned to more than $1.52 trillion in the U.S. alone. With technology like agentic AI being heavily embedded on top of companies' aging technology systems and operations, this rising cost of tech debt makes sense. Many organizations are quickly implementing new technologies without addressing underlying systems first.
Blockchain technology enables companies to create a trusted architecture for sharing data across networks securely and reliably, thereby addressing master data issues more effectively.