Real Alpha
Watch modeSubscribed

Inside Blackstone · 3 min · Oct 13, 2026

Cloud revenue is beginning to reflect AI infrastructure spending

Winfield Sickles links higher yields to growth and estimates hyperscaler spending will top $800 billion this year. Cloud revenue growth suggests the spending is beginning to show up in results.

WS

Winfield Sickles

About this segment

Winfield Sickles links higher yields to growth and estimates hyperscaler spending will top $800 billion this year. Cloud revenue growth suggests the spending is beginning to show up in results.

From “SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son: Superintelligence, AI Investing, and the Future of Robotics”, Oct 13, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “Is AI a bubble?” See all 10 answers

“upwards of $800 billion this year, probably over a trillion dollars next year.”
WSWinfield Sicklesat 6:12 · Inside Blackstone6:12

Takeaways

  1. Hyperscaler spending could exceed $1 trillion next year.
  2. Cloud revenue was up 50% to 120% across major names.
  3. He views recent yield increases as growth-driven.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 12:30Son argues AI safety requires progress, not a slowdown2:53
  2. 15:11SoftBank backs the AI ecosystem and its robotics portfolio2:20
  3. 24:58Schwarzman sees AI as a decades-long investment shift3:43
  4. 1:05AI implementation needs business and technology leaders together3:23

  5. 4:29Cloud revenue is beginning to reflect AI infrastructure spending2:47

  6. 17:18Son recommends studying AI and uses it as a daily thought partner2:38Up next

Transcript

From the transcript Inside Blackstone publishes with the episode.

  1. 4:36

    Hey Winfield. Hey Christine. Welcome back. All right, a lot has happened in the three weeks since you've been here. Understatement. I mean, including the haircut. Maybe also not an understatement. Looks good! Thank you. All right, the single sentence Economic Weather Report this week, I'm gonna make you do it. Single sentence. One sentence. One sentence Economic Weather Report is: corporate borrowing costs are definitely higher and we're paying super close attention to it, but all the drivers of growth, which are born out of this AI infrastructure boom, and then the broadening of that to the rest of the economy is very much intact.

  2. 5:10

    All right, you can go a little bit deeper now. I can talk more? Yeah, you can talk a little bit more about what's behind it. Okay so, Treasury yields, 10 year, through 5.3%. Highest level since 2002, right? Driven by growth, predominantly in our opinion. It's amazing to think that that's happened over six months. That's when yields bottomed and stocks are up almost 20%. Corporate borrowing costs have expanded a little bit, but generally speaking, they're contained.

  3. 5:37

    And from our point of view, it's this acceleration in business investment. It's CapEx broadening out in the economy. And then economic data for the most part. Jobs report was a little bit weak, the last one that came out. But, more broadly, the economic data keeps surprising to the top side. And when you look at Q3 GDP estimates, they're running around 3%, which is above trend for the US economy. Plus the AI infrastructure build-out, which is contributing to that story. A hundred percent. So do you think this can continue?

  4. 6:05

    I think so because of what you just said on the AI infrastructure build-out. And I think, also, when you look to the public markets and you look to the earnings trajectory there, Q2, we've had this huge hyperscaler spend, you know, upwards of $800 billion this year, probably over a trillion dollars next year. We're in the middle of Q3 earnings now. We'll see where they deliver. But last quarter, you saw cloud revenue up between 50 to 120% across those names.

  5. 6:34

    So it feels like the spend is starting to show up on the other side of the equation. Okay, I always have to ask, any data you're seeing from our portfolio companies that tells you what's happening? I think you actually have the data from your great conversation with David Levine last week. We have all this AI infrastructure, but all of a sudden that's now impacting, for example, our logistics business and driving some of the growth that we're seeing there.

  6. 6:59

    So I think in terms of our proprietary data and how that broadening is coming to bear, that's a great example. That's great. Well, thank you for being here. And now we're gonna turn to my conversation with Masa Son from SoftBank.