A $300B 'Debt Wall' Is Looming over Private-Equity Backed Companies
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Now with LLM's that business model is in shambles and the finance side of it is less attractive with interest rates so high. I suspect that this is actually driving the software engineer hiring slow-down, because these companies were actually doing most of the employing of software engineers, much more than the big tech companies.
I ended up sidestepping the whole market and now I make $75k NZD, so I'm not sure who won in the end.
That was also one of the best teams of technical people I’ve ever known.
Sadly, there was also the Amazon and AWS S-Team leadership, who came up with things like RTO and mandatory co-location with your manager. They lost a lot of good people, and I think that was entirely intentional.
Closely related, you can read about the PE Zombie funds that cover a lot of this debt.
You've got it reversed, the debt BDC's and PC firms write is usually floating rate based off SOFR. That' s why they do so well in rising rate environments.
Now they often borrow at fixed rates by issuing bonds or preferred shares that pay a fixed rate so falling rates has to opposite effect on them.
It used to be that vendors could tie their cost to the value they provide, but now their cost is more correlated to the token spend to reverse engineer and re-implement them (using appropriate clean room controls etc). If their cost goes to far above the AI-driven re-write, they're more likely to get jettisoned (absent some other moat not included purely in the technology).
I'm sure we can all think of products that charge a fair whack in license fees, but would not be massively difficult to re-implement (or at least for the subset of features actually used).
Like in theory your agents can build all that too, but all the ancillary bits benefit a lot from being spread across a pool of users with different time zones, release cycles, whatever.
And its the same reason you'd rather have a SaaS vendor, than asking an agent why the cloud bill keeps climbing and then have to debate the impact of delete such and such VMs or databases that nobody knows what do :)
You also don't ask your agent to start from assembly.
Things you can get upfront as libraries or services are things you and your agent don't have to worry about.
I'm not even sure there is anything new here, just that we have a capability jump with LLMs, you'll probably prefer spending it on building features, not replacing vendors (unless they are crazy expensive).
i.e. you wouldn't vibe code your general ledger, but I'd guess Confluence is pretty vulnerable.
I think the SaaS-pocalypse is going to surface more from new AI-first SaaS companies entering the market and undercutting incumbents in a way that's difficult to compete with.
Are we in a slow-down anymore? Anecdotally I feel things were rough Dec '25 - June '26, but ever since August I've had more interview requests in my inbox than I can remember in my 10+ year career.
The private equity and private credit crowd is one of these groups that are currently running into this issue.
There is no way a growing company($15M to $500M in yearly sales is the sweet spot for these private credit companies) can compete with Google on debt terms so they have to raise their rates to compete suddenly, not because of all rates rising but strictly because we've just seen a huge debt issuance from some very solid credit companies.
We haven't seen a shock like this in 20+ years I've followed the credit market where a small group of companies issue so much high quality debt in such a short period of time, note there is also a lot of less high quality debt issued in this same time:)
So much has been issued that credit funds have run out of appetite to acquire Lowe middle market debt at their current spreads. This is just the way markets work so no one is crying in the casino but it is a big shock to the credit markets.
heck there was concern that the US government may have trouble issuing 5-10Y debt at rates they are used to because of the amount of GOOG, META,etc debt that is available at better terms.
Its a wrinkle to the markets that no one really predicted as a knock on effect of AI's growth.
This is all the back drop for BDC(Business Development Companies) and other private credit issuers who normally loan money for 5-7 year terms.
Those cheap 2021 loans to these small private companies are now coming due into this market with the additional head wind that the largest single sector that issued debt was venture backed software companies, who now face the head winds of the macro factors described above and the additional factor of AI commoditizing alot of hte software that these companies are building.
Private credit and equity are going to have a rough couple of years.
Things to watch out for are lack of IPO's and exist from venture/PE backed companies and a proliferation of continuation funds that kick the can down the road.
On the plus side, its a great time to be a credit trader, but not necessarily a credit issuer:)
The mere success of “AI” won’t be sufficient to repay those loans. Many of them only make sense in a world where AI is wildly transformative and profitably successful.
Also since idiots predicted hyperinflation 5-4 years ago and other idiots believed them, we're still before the 'bust' of precious metal prices (We're at the point where people invest in opening new gold/silver mines), which means it will be harded to edge against inflation than it used to be.
The Fed has been trying to hit its 2% inflation target (which is arguably unrealistic as the neutral rate but that's another topic) for half a decade and can't hit it. I suppose the question is: What do you consider hyperinflation objectively?
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/oct/is-us-abo...
Due to structural demographics and other factors (exhausting institutional buyers of sovereign debt no longer required to buy and hold it at below market pricing, and sovereigns now having to go sell debt into a price sensitive debt market), we've gone from a capital surplus to a capital shortage, and this will likely continue long into the future due to demographics (working age population shrinks, wages get pushed up, and a whole lot of debt that needs to get refinanced at current and forward curve interest rates [real estate, private equity, sovereign debt, etc]).
https://www.apollo.com/wealth/insights-news/insights/daily-s...
If you can forecast the cost of money curve, you can forecast "who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out" based on their debt load and future cost of debt, and therefore when the economics turn against what the fundamentals can support.
https://www.ustreasuryyieldcurve.com/
https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/1994/04/25/buffett-you-dont-f...
2% yoy inflation when assets grow 10% yoy mean reducing the purchasing power of work. Inflation target should be around asset growth if you choose to tax income rather than wealth.
I remember definitions of monthly inflation rate exceeding 10%. Wikipedia has monthly inflation rate exceeding 50%.
Either way, far higher than USA currently has.
If AI didn’t pay off, Alphabet could service the debt without issue. Oracle would be sold for parts.
Those holdings are carried in the books at valuations that arguably could be justified in the past but are no longer realistic.
Private equity firms are basically sitting on them, unable to sell them or list them at current valuations.
https://www.notveryprivateequity.com/eight-year-hold/ https://www.pennmutualam.com/market-insights/blogs/chart-of-...
The End of Private Equity’s Leveraged Buyout Era Is Nigh - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-09-30/the-en... | https://archive.today/B1EfY - September 30th, 2026
Blackstone’s Private Equity Chief Joe Baratta Leaving Firm - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-25/blackston... | https://archive.today/ZH2so - September 25th, 2026
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47049024 (citations)
Are they forced to sell? To raise new capital? To increase value somehow (?) to show the debt can be met? I don't know enough to even know what questions to ask. Are they in trouble, I guess, as in, suppose they had to sell to cover debt, in this market, would anyone be around to buy?
Private Equity firms on the other hand do generally take on a lot of debt- they have their own money but they borrow even more (2) and use that amount of money to buy out the current owners of a company. Basically they borrow to turn a steady stream of revenue into the future (an existing software company that is profitable) into a big pile of cash today for the current owners. And then they need to pay off that borrowing over time, from the steady stream of revenue that the software company generates. And if they are wrong about the size of the steady stream of revenue, they basically declare bankruptcy and the people who loaned the money (banks but also pension firms etc.) now run the company.
1: The way that VC changes is that the rising interest rates mean that the returns to safe investments are higher, so in order to attract new capital VC firms have to promise even higher returns as well.
2: They borrow money to get higher returns- if you have 5 dollars in a stock and it goes up 20% you have 6 dollars. If you have 5 dollars and borrow 5 dollars and invest it in a stock that goes up 20% you have 7 dollars after you pay back the loan. The catch is, if the stock instead goes down by 20%, after you pay back the loan you only have 3 dollars. (And if the stock goes down 50% you are wiped out.) But PE firms are confident that their investments will always be winners, so they take out loans like that.
The ability to purchase often comes in through either Private fund investments or via Debt.
* Private funds are most often drawdown funds (Private equity funds, VC Funds, Real Estate Funds, etc.). These are managed funds not available on public markets, typically require a substantial commitment of funds, and generally in return these investors can expect a significant return on their capital.
* Debt was a very popular way to finance these purchases as well when interests rate were lower, and you expect to sell the asset/company before the debt comes due. Basically cheap money made this feasible/possible.
The expectations are typically 5-10 years for both of these funding models; with private funds, they expect to run for X years, long enough to acquire the assets, clean them up, and resell them at a profit. For debt, the expectation was to sell before the debt came due, along the same timeline.
So that's the backdrop.
The primary concern here is around investments in tech and SaaS companies impacting both models. SaaS has contracted quite a bit with pressure from AI and valuations are lower.
The article is focused on the debt financed path; PE hasn't been able to sell companies as quickly as they would like or at a price they would like, so they are sitting on the books. And for companies purchased using a combination or private funds, they have companies they can't unload for the price they would like. The funds that are in this state where they cannot sell remaining portfolio companies without realizing losses are called zombie funds.
Those who can’t refinance will sell assets or the business.
What that means in the end will depend on individual businesses.
This is the PE playbook backfiring. Buy the company, load it up with debt, pillage every dollar that can be found, then try to pass it off to some unsuspecting schmuck by convincing them the company still has value. That works unless interest rates skyrocket mid flight and you have to renew the debt, then you’re royally f$&!ked.
If these PE firms are truly the business geniuses they claim to just run the companies they bought well and weather the storm. However I think we’re about to find out real quick who is actually good at business and who was just shuffling cheap leveraged money around trying to look important and smart.
Which in some cases means the general public via IPO.
I think we’re about to find out real quick who is actually good at business and who was just shuffling cheap leveraged money around trying to look important and smart.
Sounds like a prescient proxy for AI vs humans.
You're talking more about VC tech firms.
These distressed PE targets loaded with debt are often sold to another private buyer, or if they are taken public (sometimes not for the first time) they are much too small or have too bad of financials to be in the indexes that regular people are buying.
Investment banks are always involved in the IPO. That's not going to get Wonder into the Russell 1000 or anything like that.