tl;dr: Ben Thompson draws parallels between Jay Cooke's 1873 railroad-bond collapse and today's AI infrastructure buildout, noting hyperscalers have raised $194B in debt this year while Google is now tapping equity (including Berkshire Hathaway) to fund TPU expansion. Nvidia's new $500B financing partnership with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone and others—backstopped by up to 25% residual-value guarantees—aims to unlock institutional capital but signals rising risk, especially as Anthropic and OpenAI reduce CUDA dependence in favor of TPUs and Trainium. The escalating reliance on debt, equity, and now pension/insurance capital mirrors the pre-Panic-of-1873 dynamics.