JP Morgan marks down private credit loans amid AI jitters
JP Morgan has marked down the value of specific loans held by private-credit groups, tightening its grip on the sector as boss Jamie Dimon warns of a looming AI reckoning.
The bank’s move specifically targets software companies, which it now views as highly vulnerable to being replaced by artificial intelligence.
By devaluing these assets, JP Morgan has reduced the amount of capital it is willing to lend to private-credit providers.
The shift, as reported by the Financial Times, follows continuous warnings from Dimon, who has drew comparisons between the current market tensions to the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
Speaking at the bank’s annual investor day in February, Dimon said he is seeing “people doing dumb things” and expressed high anxiety over an impending market cycle.
Nerves in the software sector spiked last month after Anthropic AI launched a new tool which wiped billions off the European stock markets.
Asset managers swept up in private credit jitters
This institutional retreat has triggered a liquidity crisis across the $2 trillion private credit market with investors rushing to exit tech-heavy portfolios.
Last week, Blackstone and Blackrock were forced to address a surge in redemption requests as anxieties spiked.
Blackstone’s flagship $82bn BCRED fund saw investors attempt to pull a record 7.9 per cent of shares – roughly $3.8 billion.
To meet the demand without destabilising the fund, Blackstone and its employees stepped in with their own capital to bridge a 0.9 per cent gap above the fund’s typical 5 per cent quarterly limit.
Days later, Blackrock was hit with a surge leading it to limit withdrawals from its $26bn HPS Corporate Lending Fund.
After receiving requests to redeem 9.3 per cent of the fund’s shares, Blackrock strictly enforced its five per cent cap, leaving investors with roughly half of the cash they requested.
The “AI scare trade” continues to drive these jitters, as lenders and investors alike fear that the legacy software firms making up the bulk of private debt portfolios are poorly positioned to survive the rise of specialized AI tools.