Interview: S&P Global's Luca Blasi on Pricing the AI Boom...and much more
As AI capex is increasingly financed through private credit and asset-based finance rather than public markets, the question investors keep circling back to is simple. How do you actually price it?
In this conversation, we sat down with Luca Blasi, Global Head of Private Markets & Regulatory Solutions at S&P Global Market Intelligence, to unpack that question from the inside. Luca has spent 25 years pricing illiquid, hard-to-value assets, including a stint at the Bank of England supervising how banks apply valuation frameworks in practice, and he brings that lens to one of the most concentrated capital buildouts in a generation.
The interview covers how private credit deals actually get priced when there's no active market to check the number against, why payment-in-kind structures can quietly mask a portfolio in distress, and why Luca believes most valuation losses trace back to weak governance rather than bad assets.
"You are not able to differentiate a company that has a problem from a company that's actually growing."
Luca Blasi, on how PIK structures can mask distress
Luca also gets into the correlation risk building between public and private data centre debt, why AI has sped up underwriting but not yet reporting, and what a well-prepared investor playbook looks like if the correction some are predicting actually arrives.
This conversation is for anyone trying to separate genuine opportunity from "irrational exuberance," to use Luca's own phrase, in one of the fastest-growing corners of private markets. Watch the full interview below
