BIS 发布报告：AI 公司之间循环融资超半数，风险或被低估
BIS 报告说，AI 公司超一半的投资来自同行自己，供应商投了钱客户再买它的货，风险藏得很深，数据挺扎眼的。
国际清算银行（BIS）发布关于 AI 公司循环融资的研究报告。数据显示，2021 至 2025 年间，AI 公司获得的投资中有 55.2% 来自其他 AI 公司。仅 16.1% 的 AI 间交易涉及既互相投资又互为客户的关系，但这些交易占资金量的 46.4%。芯片、云和基础设施供应商参与了 73% 的循环融资关系，其中 64% 的投资方同时是受资方的供应商。报告以 1990 年代末的 Lucent 和 Nortel 为例，警告一旦受资方客户经营受挫，投资方可能同时损失股权和订单，且多数风险因私人公司和不入账的担保承诺而难以被单一监管机构看到。
BIS (Bank for International Settlements) just published a report on circular financing among AI companies.
> Over half the money flowing into AI companies comes from other AI companies: between 2021 and 2025, peers supplied 55.2% of AI firms' incoming investment value, while AI investors sent 28.7% of their own deal value to AI targets.
> Circular deals are rare but big: only 16.1% of AI-to-AI deals involved firms that also buy from or sell to each other, yet they held 46.4% of the money. That figure is partly inflated, because an entire funding round counts as circular if just 1 of its AI investors also trades with the company.
> Chip, cloud and infrastructure suppliers are the investor in 73% of circular ties, and in 64% of all such ties the investor also sells to the firm it funds. Data tool and model makers rarely invest this way, since their products are more interchangeable.
> AI is unusually suited to these deals: suppliers can track customers' compute use, chips and data centres are custom-built, few firms make critical tools such as photolithography machines, and capital needs are too big for normal lenders. In AI compute and cloud, 15.2% of supplier-customer ties also involve financing, versus just 3.3% with equity stakes in a broad 2006 US study.
> Some AI sales are paid for by the sellers themselves, because money a supplier invests in a customer partly returns as the supplier's revenue. Lucent and Nortel did this in the late 1990s, then lost money on the loans and lost the sales when the telecom firms they funded stalled.
> A supplier that invests in its customer can lose twice: if the customer struggles, both the stake and the future orders shrink. Because these deals involve a few giant suppliers, 1 shock could spread through sales and finance at the same time.
> Much of this risk is hidden: many AI firms are private, deals mix cash with long-term purchase promises, and pledges to cover any fall in the value of chips and data centre equipment stay off the books until a downturn forces payment. Because these firms span many sectors and countries, no single regulator sees the full picture, and the research names no companies or overall dollar total.
