Foreign money and circular deals are fueling the AI boom, and the 2008 comparisons are back

The AI boom has a funding story, and it is starting to sound familiar. Bloomberg reporting from October 12-13, 2026 describes a circular global financing loop now powering the construction of data centers and chip plants. Money is flowing in from surplus nations such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. It is also cycling between major tech firms themselves. Follow the money, then follow it again Bloomberg’s coverage points to two engines behind the current surge. The first is foreign capital from countries running trade surpluses. The second is investment among the big tech companies, which together speed up the buildout of AI infrastructure. The scale is enormous. The world’s five largest tech companies are projected to invest over $1 trillion in AI-related projects by 2025-2026. Four of the hyperscalers alone, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta, are aiming for between $720-$745 billion in combined capital expenditure in 2026. Hyperscalers are the cloud giants that rent out massive computing capacity. Capex is the money they spend on physical assets like servers, buildings, and chips. The International Monetary Fund has tried to put a number on how tangled things have bec...