PIMCO said evidence is scarce that surprise AI corporate debt issuance is pushing up U.S. Treasury yields. According to Sina Finance, multi-asset credit strategist Lotfi Karoui wrote that the AI capex boom could raise the equilibrium real rate through savings and investment channels, but the narrower claim that AI issuance is directly crowding out U.S. Treasuries is not supported by the data.

PIMCO said six surprise issuance deals over the past year saw their existing bonds fall unusually before and after the announcements, suggesting the size or timing of those deals was not fully priced in. The firm also said that looking at two-day moves in the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield around each surprise AI issuance event did not show a statistically significant rise.

A similar analysis of estimated changes in the 10-year U.S. Treasury term premium produced the same result. PIMCO also examined swap spreads and said that if investors were selling Treasuries to absorb unexpected fixed-rate AI bond supply, Treasuries should have weakened relative to swaps, but it again found almost no systematic market reaction around the surprise issuance events.