Jim Cramer says a wave of major AI listings and corporate debt sales could strain investor cash, even though the businesses behind the boom are generating real revenues.
Jim Cramer warned on Monday that a fresh wave of giant initial public offerings and capital raisings could put pressure on the bull market, even as enthusiasm for artificial intelligence remains strong. The CNBC host pointed to Anthropic’s filing for an IPO prospectus as a sign that a long-awaited rush of new listings from major AI names may be nearing, with other companies also likely to test investors’ appetite for new stock. He said the market can absorb some supply, but not an endless stream of it.
Cramer’s concern is not that the AI boom is built on fiction. He said the companies at the centre of the current cycle are real businesses with revenues and products that customers want, unlike many of the speculative internet start-ups that vanished in the dot-com collapse more than two decades ago. His warning is narrower: the market may be strong, but it is not limitless, and a flood of deals can still drain investor cash. “This time around the companies are real. They tend to make big money. We trusted them before this moment. We will trust them after,” he said.
That fear is not theoretical. Bloomberg reported in May that venture firms backing Cerebras Systems were set for billions of dollars in paper gains after the AI chipmaker’s listing, with investor demand helping to push the stock sharply higher on debut. In September, Bloomberg said Klarna and its shareholders raised $1.37 billion in an oversubscribed IPO priced above the marketed range, while another Bloomberg report in June found that US IPO stocks had jumped more than 50% in 2025 on renewed risk appetite. Together, those deals suggest the market is still welcoming new issues, but they also show how quickly a busy calendar can absorb liquidity.
Cramer said he sees a similar pattern to the late 1990s in the sheer scale of capital being raised, even if the underlying businesses are far more established now. He warned that large equity sales, along with heavy debt issuance from major companies such as Meta, Alphabet, SpaceX and Oracle, could compete for the same pool of money that might otherwise support the wider market. “I think both the debt and the equity markets are running out of money,” he said. “I am not calling a top,” he added. “I am just saying that I do not like what I see.”
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