That figure marked a 50% increase over the private capital group’s second quarter lending, the Financial Times (FT) reported Tuesday (Nov. 3), as Apollo lent to artificial intelligence (AI) giants like Anthropic and Nvidia.
According to the FT, Apollo has now lent more than $350 billion in the last 12 months — nearly a third more than prior year — at levels that are in line with those of large commercial banks such as HSBC and Citigroup.
The FT notes that while many private credit groups have served as lenders to buyout firms’ portfolio companies, Apollo has emerged as a critical lender to Big Tech firms as they seek to raise billions of dollars to finance AI infrastructure.
Apollo’s lending to companies like Nvidia, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX/xAI involved arranging complicated deals that collateralize large borrowings against valuable chips. However, the report said, some Apollo rivals have not been as willing to follow this path.
Ares Management CEO Michael Arougheti recently told his investors the company has avoided lending money against AI chips because he did “not know how to underwrite the decline in depreciation curves on that type of technology,” the FT said.
The report added that some large commercial banks also worry about becoming overexposed to individual Big Tech companies in their loan books after a multitrillion-dollar wave of borrowing, making them hesitant to lend out more due to fear of becoming too reliant on any one customer.
The news follows recent comments from Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok, who wrote in a note last month that while corporate America has invested heavily in artificial intelligence in recent years, those efforts have so far not borne much fruit.
“Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech,” Slok wrote in a note published Oct. 24.
“Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493,” he added, referring to the “Magnificent 7” companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla).
The note went on to say that many corporations were “pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins.”
