New Delhi, Oct. 8 -- The artificial intelligence boom is becomingreally expensive to finance, raising questions over how long companies can sustain the current pace of spending. A new Brookings paper by Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh argues that the AI buildout is increasingly moving beyond the cash flows of the companies driving demand.

The ability to attract outside capital depends heavily on the credit quality of companies contracting for computing capacity, according to Van Nieuwerburgh.

But despite being at the centre of the AI boom, "frontier AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic generally lack comparable standalone credit profiles."

And hence, the financial burden of the AI buildout is increasingly bei...