The Data Tapes

Setpoint's Bite-Sized Debt Newsletter: December Edition I

December 10, 2025

The Latest in ABS and Debt Markets

Welcome to The Data Tapes—your biweekly snapshot of private credit and ABS markets. In each edition, we bring you concise updates on debt financings, platform fundraises, data insights, market trends, and the latest from Setpoint.

🚀 What’s New at Setpoint

  • 🚘 Auto Finance News Spotlights the Push for Collateral Integrity in ABF: AFN Journalist Truth Headlam featured Setpoint and our Co-Founder & CEO Stuart Wall on how PledgeCheck delivers independent verification to confirm every asset is truly unique — and how it’s earning interest from 250+ institutions. Read the article.

  • 🏆 Setpoint Named in ABF Journal’s 2025 Power Players: Technology: We’re honored to be recognized among the industry’s leading innovators for our work advancing facility management and driving new standards for collateral integrity in asset-backed finance. Read the feature.

  • 🚀 We’re Growing at Setpoint: Fresh off being named 2025 Fintech Game-Changer of the Year by Opportunity Austin’s A-LIST Awards and #1 Startup in Austin on LinkedIn’s 2025 Top Startups list, we’re expanding our team across key roles. Check out our open positions.

💸 Debt Financings & Acquisitions

💰️Platform Growth

📈 Visuals

🗣️ Market Commentary

  • “Not much of this is new. When I joined PIMCO back in the late 1990s, I spent a good portion of my initial time at the firm focused on the underwriting of private assets. We called them pure privates. These were 4(a)(2) privates that were created as part of the Securities Act of 1933. 144(a) privates which are popular; I think the first one was issued in 1990. The technology being utilized to fund AI infrastructure today - some of these off-balance sheet contingent or make guarantee frameworks - were around in the mid-to-late 1990s. The difference today is you have this massive capital investment need so the deals are larger. But a lot of the technology has been dusted off so to speak for the new era. What’s been so unique in terms of credit asset performance in general has been the post-GFC period. Where we haven’t had a sustained period of economic weakness. Since the GFC, just blindly buying the lowest quality credit on the board, whether its private credit or lower quality public credit, you generated 7% a year more than high quality bonds. That explains a lot. Not surprisingly, you’ve seen massive growth in that part of the market. The reality is when you’ve grown this much, when you’ve lent so much money to weaker quality borrowers, when covenants have weakened, when spreads are tight, when equities have gone up as much as they have, you’re going to have challenges in these markets.” - Dan Ivascyn, CIO of PIMCO on Technology and Market Tailwinds Driving Growth of Private Credit

  • “The infrastructure for AI requires a lot more power than anything we’ve ever seen from the computing infrastructure world. The individual racks to power these AI computing workloads are as much as 140 kilowatts, whereas a legacy rack to support a cloud data center 15 or 20 years ago was two to four kilowatts. The next generations are going to be 600 kilowatts, and then from there, a megawatt. That amount of power has depleted a lot of the existing energy that’s available to power data centers, and the demand for power for data centers has grown dramatically. That’s left us in this situation where we don’t have the energy that’s needed to power the demand coming from AI, so we need to build it. Crusoe has taken an energy-first approach, which entails building in areas where we can access low-cost, abundant energy resources to accelerate more abundant intelligence.” - Chase Lochmiller, CEO of Crusoe on Energy Requirements for AI Infrastructure Buildout 

  • “Today, the total addressable market for asset-backed securities represents many multiples of the private corporate credit market at ~$1.7T. This migration is unlocking scalable, high-quality opportunities (many investment grade) for investors and new financing avenues for issuers seeking true partnership. One large theme we are seeing is more corporates shifting to asset-light models and banks are moving toward longer-term funding partnerships rather than one-off sales.” - Daniel Pietrzak, Global Head of Private Credit at KKR on Private Credit Under the Hood

  • “The cornerstone of any investor due diligence should be an understanding of the manager’s ability to source proprietary, diversified origination and a proven ability to do so over an extended period of time through multiple cycles.” - Steven Tenenbayev, CIO of InterVest capital partners on the importance of proprietary origination

📖 What We’re Reading & Listening To

Investor Presentations & Outlooks

  • 2026 Annual Investment Outlook (Invesco) 

  • Alternative Investments Outlook 2026 (JPMorgan) 

  • Blue Owl Investor Presentation - Third Quarter 2025 (Blue Owl) 

  • Private Credit Potential and Peril (Wells Fargo) 

Reading

  • ABF Capital Flow Survey (DealCatalyst)

  • Latest Howard Marks memo: Is It a Bubble? (Oaktree)

  • Q3 2025 Private Credit Quarterly (Configure Partners)

  • Moving America: Mortgages, Mobility, and Unlocking the American Dream (Citi GPS)

  • Secretive $3T Fund Giant Makes Flashy Move Into Private Assets (Bloomberg)

  • The Forgotten History of Insurance as America’s Original Private Lender (Covenant Lite)

Podcasts & Interviews

  • Affirm’s Max Levchin Breaks Down How Buy Now, Pay Later Really Works (Odd Lots)

  • Dan Ivascyn Is Excited About a New Era in Fixed Income (Odd Lots)

  • David Rubenstein: Defining Great Investors, Guiding Presidents, and Preserving History (In Good Company)

  • Gavin Baker - Nvidia v. Google, Scaling Laws, and the Economics of AI (Invest Like the Best)

  • Henry Kravis on Building KKR, Deal-Making, and the Future of AI in Private Equity (Elad Gil)

  • The AI Infrastructure of Our Future with Chase Lochmiller, CEO of Crusoe (McKinsey)