Wall Street banks lobby for investment-grade ratings for unprofitable OpenAI and Anthropic right after IPO
mkheck · x · 2026-09-09
Per the FT, major Wall Street banks are lobbying credit rating agencies to grant OpenAI and Anthropic investment-grade ratings immediately after their IPOs — despite neither being profitable or generating positive free cash flow. One senior credit analyst said they still treat both as "deep in speculative grade." An IG rating would let pension funds and insurers buy their debt, opening the $11.7 trillion corporate bond market. The author notes Meta, Netflix, and Tesla each waited a decade or more, and questions the argument that an IPO alone fixes the balance sheet — retirement money and insurance premiums would flow into companies that have never turned a profit.
More from Companies & People
- EPFL hiring safety pretraining engineers with $1M grant to build 700B open model — manoelribeiro · 2026-09-10
- Exclusive: Anthropic first major lab to withhold latest model from UK's AISI — connoraxiotes · 2026-09-10
- Canada ranks 44th of 47 in AI literacy, launches free national AI training — korymath · 2026-09-09
- NYU CDS adds Todd Gureckis as Professor of Psychology and Data Science — LakeBrenden · 2026-09-09
- Anthropic's 'Pre-Crime' Surveillance of AI Activists Sparks Backlash and Defense — AndyMasley · 2026-09-09
- e/acc's beffjezos accuses Anthropic of scaring regulators to lock in its lead — beffjezos · 2026-09-09