Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs emerged as the dominant player in Monday's artificial intelligence financing surge, co-leading Meta Platforms' $95 billion share offering, serving as sole structuring agent on SpaceX's $40 billion chip financing deal, and securing lead-left bookrunner position on Anthropic's blockbuster IPO. According to Bloomberg, these deals total at least $210 billion and are expected to generate tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for Goldman. The bank's prominent position on the Anthropic IPO came as a surprise after Morgan Stanley had led work expanding the AI firm's debt revolver facility, with Goldman's relationship led by San Francisco-based bankers Nick Giovanni and Jung Min, who also serves as a top banker to Nvidia.
The Anthropic IPO filing builds on significant AI equity market activity, with Alphabet having sold $85 billion of stock in June and Meta Platforms planning a $95 billion sale. As reported by CNBC, Cramer noted his encouragement that no single customer exceeded 10% of revenue in the nine months through September 30. The filing also highlights cloud spending commitments that remain due even if AI demand slows. BeInCrypto reports that Meta's reported sale raises questions about whether other large AI spenders will tap investors for cash, with Cramer pointing to Amazon and Microsoft as the likeliest candidates for future AI funding, since both report earnings this week.
In SpaceX's deal announced Monday, Elon Musk's company is purchasing chips from Nvidia, backed by a lease with Apollo Global Management Inc., with Goldman working as the structuring agent while funds managed by its asset manager committed money to the deal. According to Bloomberg, the deal came together after the bank received a call from SpaceX months ago. In June, Goldman was the lead bookrunner of SpaceX's record-setting IPO, for which it was paid $100 million in fees after years of relationship building by senior bankers Dan Dees, Kim Posnett, David Ludwig and Susie Scher. The bank also reaped hundreds of millions of dollars more from incentive fees tied to early investments it helped arrange for its wealthy clients.
Wall Street has been racing to finance the AI frenzy, which includes surging demand for chips and data centers to provide computing power needed for artificial intelligence technology. The five biggest investment banks racked up almost $19 billion from underwriting revenue in the first nine months of the year, including a 48% jump in equity capital markets and a 13% rise from debt underwriting. Goldman has pushed to get in on the boom, including landing a spot as the only bank in a partnership that committed in August to financing $500 billion of AI chip deals for Nvidia customers. Last year, Goldman formed a capital solutions group, led by Pete Lyon and Mahesh Saireddy, to help tap various business units as it constructs large financing packages for companies.
