TAMPA, Fla., July 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ – In a DoubleLine research paper, Corporate Credit Portfolio Manager Mariya Entina identifies the surge in AI infrastructure capex as a two-edged sword that, while visible in certain high-flying stocks, remains an underrated risk among investment grade corporate bond issuers in industries outside the technology sector.
“U.S. investment grade (IG) companies in the first quarter of 2026 posted their strongest quarterly earnings in years while recording the IG cohort’s largest cash drawdown on record,” Ms. Entina writes. “Capital expenditure (capex) connects the two. AI spending is no longer a hyperscaler story. AI expenditures flow through supply chains into utilities, industrial manufacturers and infrastructure suppliers across the IG index. Consequently, a capex slowdown would impair earnings well beyond a prominent, closely followed group of technology firms to impact a wide set of IG issuers.”
The research paper, titled “Trickle-Down AI-conomics,” is available here: https://doubleline.com/wp-content/uploads/DoubleLine_Trickle-Down-AI-conomics_20260629.pdf
Given the concentration IG bonds’ exposure to AI capex and the inconspicuousness of this risk, Ms. Entina warns that many investors might be at risk of, and unaware of, correlated risks to an artificial intelligence-driven investment bubble in their supposedly high-grade fixed income allocations. “DoubleLine’s Corporate Credit team,” she writes, “factors this overlooked risk dimension into its ongoing assessment of corporate credits.”
“Active credit management in this environment is not about picking AI winners,” according to Ms. Entina. “It is about sizing a theme that benchmark exposure already delivers in abundance and exercising a deliberate effort to select names that will hold up if AI capex growth proves less durable than a naïve extrapolation from current spending might imply.”
About DoubleLine’s Corporate Credit Team
The Corporate Credit team at DoubleLine manages $9 billion in assets in investment grade (IG) and below-IG corporate credit, including fixed income securities and bank debt. The team underwrites the individual credits and actively risk-manages the economic-sector concentration, duration and other aggregate characteristics of DoubleLine’s corporate credit portfolios and sleeves of multi-sector portfolios. The team comprises 23 investment professionals, including portfolio managers, analysts and traders.
About DoubleLine
DoubleLine Capital LP is an investment adviser registered under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. DoubleLine’s offices can be reached by telephone at (813) 791-7333 or by email at info@doubleline.com. In addition to its headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and an office in Los Angeles, DoubleLine has offices in Dubai, London and Tokyo. Media can reach DoubleLine by email at media@doubleline.com.
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SOURCE DoubleLine
