Oct 2, 2026 · 9 min · 9 segments
The Bank for International Settlements has measured circular financing in AI for the first time: between 2021 and 2025, 55.2% of the investment value flowing into AI firms came from other AI firms…
The hardware at the heart of the AI build-out may not be worth much in five years.
Some of the debt financing it runs for 20 or 30.
That is not our phrase.
It is the Reserve Bank of Australia's, published yesterday, on the same day the Bank for International Settlements finally counted how much of the money going into AI comes from AI itself.
Deal data matched against commercial relationship data.
2021 through 2025.
Two findings.
Read the other way round, and this is the number.
The sector is a bigger share of its own funding base than it is of its own investment destinations.
Second finding.
Of all the AI to AI deals, 16.1% by count also carried a commercial supply chain relationship between the investor and the target.
By value, 46.4. That gap is the story.
This is a large deal phenomenon.
not a widespread habit among small transactions.
There is a footnote worth reading carefully.
It cites older research finding direct equity stakes between trading partners in 3.3% of American customer and supplier relationships, and it finds that in compute, cloud, and related infrastructure, 15.2% of those relationships also carry a financing relationship, equity, or debt.
Those are different measures across different samples.
The bank sets them side by side only to show that financing your trading partners is unusual.
It draws no multiple between them, and neither should anyone else.
One honest limit before we go on.
The Bulletin reports shares within its own matched universe of 1,246 firms.
The hardware at the heart of the AI build-out may not be worth much in five years.
Some of the debt financing it runs for 20 or 30.
That is not our phrase.
It is the Reserve Bank of Australia's, published yesterday, on the same day the Bank for International Settlements finally counted how much of the money going into AI comes from AI itself.
Deal data matched against commercial relationship data.
2021 through 2025.
Two findings.
Read the other way round, and this is the number.
The sector is a bigger share of its own funding base than it is of its own investment destinations.
Second finding.
Of all the AI to AI deals, 16.1% by count also carried a commercial supply chain relationship between the investor and the target.
By value, 46.4. That gap is the story.
This is a large deal phenomenon.
not a widespread habit among small transactions.
There is a footnote worth reading carefully.
It cites older research finding direct equity stakes between trading partners in 3.3% of American customer and supplier relationships, and it finds that in compute, cloud, and related infrastructure, 15.2% of those relationships also carry a financing relationship, equity, or debt.
Those are different measures across different samples.
The bank sets them side by side only to show that financing your trading partners is unusual.
It draws no multiple between them, and neither should anyone else.
One honest limit before we go on.
The Bulletin reports shares within its own matched universe of 1,246 firms.
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