Goldman Sachs reports HY AI datacenter basket trades at 353bps spread as AI debt market shows strain

Goldman Sachs’ high-yield AI datacenter basket is now trading at a spread of 353 basis points, wider than where it sat back in June 2022. Broader AI-related bond issuance expected across 2025 and 2026 carries an option-adjusted spread of 381 basis points, a meaningful premium over the wider high-yield market. The numbers behind the nervousness Goldman launched its high-yield AI issuer basket in July 2026, comprising 18 equal-weighted US high-yield names. At inception, the basket carried an average spread of 319 bps and a yield of 7.45%. For context, the broader high-yield market was sitting at 267 bps and a yield of 7.3% at the time. Goldman’s AI leadership basket, a separate instrument tracking investment-grade AI-adjacent credits, has seen its spread widen from 74 bps to nearly 150 bps over the past 12 months. The basket includes names like CoreWeave alongside various joint venture debt structures. Of the 23 recent datacenter joint-deal ventures Goldman tracks, 17 are now trading wider than their origination yields. New-issue concessions on large deals have widened by up to 20 bps, as demand for longer-dated tranches has cooled. Half a trillion dollars of AI debt Goldman estimate...