--- title: "Yield: what it means · The AI Compute Race · DRYBURGH" source: https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/yield description: "Yield: For a bond, the return it pays at its market price. For a chipmaker, the share of chips that come out good. Chapter 10." --- # Yield What does “Yield” mean? YieldFor a bond, the return it pays at its market price. For a chipmaker, the share of chips that come out good. *Chapter 10.* From *The AI Compute Race*. [Read the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#buy) ## Where the book uses it - [Chapter 10 — The Lender’s Decision](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes/chapter-10)Who is lending the money and who bears the loss: the bonds, leases and guarantees behind the largest campuses, and how the paper reaches ordinary retirement accounts. ## Where the record uses it - Scorecard indicator [Hyperscaler corporate bond issuance (five investment-grade issuers)](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard#row-23) - Scorecard indicator [Amazon Jul. bond cover (orders against bonds offered)](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard#row-24) ## Sources that use it - Davide Barbuscia and Michael Gambale, “BlackRock Dodges AI Bond-Trading Flop After Offering Junk Yields,” Bloomberg, 27 July 2026, updated to reflect the bond having priced (in the paper’s own voice: “BlackRock Inc.’s $12.55 billion bond sale tied to a Meta Platforms Inc. data center”; “The investment-grade debt for the El Paso, Texas project was sold in an offering led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley at a 7.534% yield, a level more common in junk bonds”; demand from “Sopaipilla Investor, a holding company tied to BlackRock that holds an 80% stake in the data center project,” reached “just $20 billion on Friday, or 1.6 times the amount of bonds for sale,” while “The average demand for bond sales this year was closer to four times the size of the offering, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News”; “a premium of about 0.4 percentage point to where a Beignet note due in 2049 trades”; the pricing spread of 2.875 percentage points on people with knowledge of the matter) [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/press#bloomberg-blackrock-elpaso-bond-jul26) - Michelle Chan and George Hammond, “Anthropic offers Blackstone double-digit yield in latest chip financing,” Financial Times, 17 October 2026 (on people it did not name: Blackstone funds “would invest $9bn in the debt backed by Anthropic’s five-year lease payments on the chips, accounting for about half of the $18bn junior loans”; Blackstone “was offered a coupon of 10 per cent and an even higher total return after accounting for new-issue discounts and other fees”; “A borrower with a similar credit profile typically pays a yield of about 7 per cent in the public bond market, according to the ICE BofA BB US High Yield Index”; an offer reported, not a closed loan; read whole on a subscription on 18 October 2026). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/press#ft-anthropic-blackstone-yield-oct26) - U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates,” 2026 (on 5 March 2026 the one-year par yield was 3.59 percent and the two-year 3.57; this book’s make-whole arithmetic on the xAI 12.5 percent notes repaid that day discounts the call price of 106.25 and the three coupons of 6.25 points due up to 15 July 2027 at those yields plus half a percentage point, semi-annually, less 50 days of accrued interest and par, which comes to about $510 million on the $3 billion of notes, $508.7 million at 3.57 percent and $516.3 million at 3.40, the February low, against the $518 million the SpaceX 10-Q reports; the notes’ indenture is not public, so the date of 15 July 2027, which the 10-Q prints as the end of its 106.25 percent prepayment penalty, is read as a first call date by assumption; the yields read in the Treasury’s own data file for 2026). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/research#treasury-par-yields-2026) ## Related terms - [Investment grade](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/investment-grade) - [Investment grade, the letters](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/investment-grade-the-letters) - [10-K, 10-Q](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/10-k-10-q) - [Backstop](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/backstop) - [Basis point](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/basis-point) - [Beignet](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/beignet) - [Bridge loan](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/bridge-loan) - [Convertible](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/convertible) - [Coupon](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/coupon) - [Covenant](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/covenant) - [DDTL](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/ddtl) - [Debt-service coverage](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/debt-service-coverage) From the glossary of The AI Compute Race. - [Campuses](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger) - [Tests](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests) - [Scorecard](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard) - [Data](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/data/releases) - [Chapter by chapter](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/companion) - [The record at a glance](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/observatory) - [The machine](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/machine) - [One campus, four futures](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/hyperion) - [Glossary](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary) - [People](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/people) - [Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources) - [Notes](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes) - [Where the book was wrong](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/corrections) - [Where its sources were wrong](https://dryburgh.com/corrections?book=vol1) - [The Paper](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/paper) - [Consent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/consent) - [Who builds and pays](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/parties) *The AI Compute Race: Five Races, One Machine* is a book by Lee S. Dryburgh, the first volume of THE COMPUTE ECONOMY, published by Dryburgh, an imprint of Contestra OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia; its record closes on 8 November 2026. [About the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1)[Tell me when it is out](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#notify)