Everybody Wants Some AI Debt

Probably everyone in the financial industry, and possibly everyone in the world, has an opinion about the artificial intelligence boom. Many of them have views on whether we are raising too much money for data centers, on who is building the best AI models, and on the prospects of particular big AI-related technology companies like Nvidia or Meta or Alphabet or Microsoft or Oracle or OpenAI. And while a lot of those views are optimistic (AI companies are raising a lot of money), there is some diversity too (a lot of people complain about a bubble).

Some people in the financial industry, and probably outside of it, have thoughts about Olo Inc., “a leading open SaaS platform for restaurants” that Thoma Bravo bought for $2 billion in September. But most people don’t. It is perfectly normal never to have thought about Olo. I myself have thought about AI and data centers and Nvidia and OpenAI a lot, but I had never thought or even heard about Olo until I searched Bloomberg for recent direct lending deals and Olo’s acquisition financing popped up.1 Also there is probably not that much diversity of opinion on Olo, or at least, not that much intensity of opinion. If you work on the Thoma Bravo deal team, or at the private credit funds that loaned Thoma Bravo money to buy the company, you probably have some thought like “yeah, Olo, pretty good, good restaurant Saas.” If you don’t, you are probably not going around thinking “I need to short this bubble in restaurant SaaS.” For the most part, either you’re in the deal or you’re indifferent.