Mariya Entina, a Portfolio Manager on DoubleLine’s Corporate Credit team, identifies the surge in AI-infrastructure capex as a two-edged sword that, while visible in certain high-flying stocks, remains an underrated risk among investment grade corporate bond issuers in industries outside the technology sector. “U.S. investment grade (IG) companies in the first quarter of 2026 posted their strongest quarterly earnings in years while recording the IG cohort’s largest cash drawdown on record,” Ms. Entina writes. “Capital expenditure (capex) connects the two. AI spending is no longer a hyperscaler story. AI expenditures flow through supply chains into utilities, industrial manufacturers and infrastructure suppliers across the IG index. Consequently, a capex slowdown would impair earnings well beyond a prominent, closely followed group of technology firms to impact a wide set of IG issuers.” Given the concentration IG bonds’ exposure to AI capex and the inconspicuousness of this risk, Ms. Entina warns that many investors might be at risk of, and unaware of, correlated risks to an AI-driven investment bubble in their supposedly high-grade fixed-income allocations. “DoubleLine’s Corporate Credit team,” she writes, “factors this overlooked risk dimension into its ongoing assessment of corporate credits.”
“Active credit management in this environment is not about picking AI winners,” according to Ms. Entina. “It is about sizing a theme that benchmark exposure already delivers in abundance and exercising a deliberate effort to select names that will hold up if AI capex growth proves less durable than a naïve extrapolation from current spending might imply.”
Ms. Entina joined DoubleLine in 2019. She is a Portfolio Manager on the Global Developed Credit team, focusing on investment grade corporate bonds. In addition, she is a contributing member of the Fixed Income Asset Allocation Committee and a corporate sector specialist on DoubleLine’s Responsible Investment team, overseeing and monitoring the Responsible Investment integration for the Global Developed Credit team. Prior to DoubleLine, Ms. Entina was an Investment Research Analyst at Pacific Life, where she covered transportation, aerospace & defense, automotive OEMs, captive finance, auto parts suppliers, diversified manufacturing and infrastructure credit. Prior to Pacific Life, she held roles at Capital Group and KPMG LLP. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Accounting from the University of California, Los Angeles. Ms. Entina is a licensed CPA, CFA® charterholder, SASB FSA Credential Holder and has earned the CFA Institute Certificate in ESG Investing.
