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$30M bank facility ($20M revolving / $10M term). Private credit lender, used to support origination capacity as the underlying loan book scaled.

$27.5M term loan facility to a revolutionary battery storage company

$20M senior-secured revolving-to-term facility. Auto lender, structured to convert from revolver to term financing as the borrowing base matured.

$15M senior-secured credit facility. Growth-stage operating company. Up to $15M in total availability with $5M funded at close, a four-year term, 15% cash-pay interest, and a small equity kicker (a penny warrant for 2% of common). We're pre-clearing high-level terms with the company before drafting a formal term sheet — a step we increasingly find saves everyone time compared to negotiating a full document before both sides agree on the deal's shape.

$4M senior facility, scalable to $15M. Real estate lender, supporting balance-sheet growth ahead of a broader capital raise.

$1.75M junior term loan to support the accretive acquisition of a regional HVAC business

Why the smartest move in a higher-for-longer market has nothing to do with guessing the Fed's next meeting.

For most of the past year, the working assumption in every credit committee, cap table conversation, and refinancing plan I've sat in on has been some version of "we just need to get to the next leg down in rates." Sponsors underwrote deals assuming spreads would compress as base rates fell. Founders delayed raises hoping a friendlier rate environment would mean friendlier valuations. Even companies with strong fundamentals treated the Fed's next move as the single biggest variable in their financing strategy.

On September 16, the Fed didn't cut. It didn't hold. It hiked the federal funds target range a quarter point, to 3.75%–4.00% — its first hike in years, delivered unanimously, with inflation still running above target and the Committee explicitly signaling it isn't done watching prices before it's satisfied.

That alone would be a useful correction to a market that had spent months pricing in relief. But the more interesting tell came from a completely different corner of the capital markets that same week: SB Energy, Holtec, and Aggreko — three of the best-financed, most hyped names in the data-center buildout — all pulled or delayed their IPOs, with SB Energy specifically facing resistance to a valuation north of $50 billion. These are not distressed companies. They are the poster children of the AI infrastructure boom, backed by some of the world's deepest pools of capital. And even they couldn't get comfortable pricing that public markets weren't ready to underwrite.

Here's the thesis: the financing advantage in this market was never going to come from correctly timing the Fed. It's going to come from building a company — and a balance sheet — that doesn't need the Fed's help to close its next round, credit facility, or exit.

That's a harder pitch than "wait for rates to fall" because it asks you to do the work now rather than later. But look at what's actually happening underneath the headline rate move. Nonfarm payrolls jumped 162,000 in August — more than triple the consensus estimate — with unemployment holding steady at 4.1%. That's not a labor market that's cracking. It's a labor market giving the Fed room to keep leaning against inflation rather than rushing to cut. Anyone underwriting a 2027 plan around imminent rate relief is fighting the data, not reading it.

The strongest counterargument is that base rates matter enormously for anyone financing with floating-rate debt, and a hike is a real cost, not a rounding error — a company carrying $20 million of SOFR-plus paper just watched its effective rate move against it, full stop. That's true, and it's exactly why structure matters more than sentiment right now. The companies getting hurt aren't the ones with variable-rate exposure per se; they're the ones who built financing plans with no plan B if rates didn't cooperate — no hedge, no fixed-rate alternative evaluated, no covenant cushion, no scenario where the base case was wrong.

What this means, practically:

Two to four takeaways, concretely:

The Fed didn't do anyone a favor this month.

That's not the problem.

The problem is how many financing plans were built assuming it would.

SB Energy delayed its offering amid pushback on a valuation above $50 billion. At the same time, Holtec paused its IPO indefinitely, and Aggreko slowed its plans, as investors grew more skeptical of the sector's growth assumptions and execution risk.

Why It Matters: This is the clearest real-time read on how public capital is actually pricing AI infrastructure risk right now, independent of what private valuations or vendor financing announcements suggest.

For the Altitude Audience: If the most capital-rich, best-connected companies in the hottest sector of the economy can't get comfortable with their own pricing, that's a useful data point for anyone benchmarking their own raise against "the market is hot" assumptions.

The FOMC raised the federal funds target range by a quarter point to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, unanimously, citing elevated inflation — a week after data showed that August payrolls jumped 162,000, against a consensus estimate near 55,000, with unemployment steady at 4.1%.

Why It Matters: This is the direct evidence behind this issue's lead thesis.

For the Altitude Audience: Any financing model, refinancing timeline, or exit plan that assumed cuts were coming needs a second look now.

Paramount settled an antitrust suit brought by 12 states, clearing the way for David Ellison's takeover in exchange for concessions including $1.5 billion in additional U.S. production spending and an editorial-independence board for CNN and CBS News.

Why It Matters: It's one of the largest media M&A deals in years and a live case study in how regulatory settlements are increasingly built around specific operational and governance concessions rather than pure divestiture.

For the Altitude Audience: Even outside media, it's a useful template for how deal terms are being shaped to survive antitrust scrutiny in 2026.

The Fed hiked instead of holding; long rates are elevated, and equities have pulled back modestly from record highs without breaking down — a market that's still constructive on growth but newly on notice about inflation.

Market Summary: Higher-for-longer just got a little more literal. A quarter-point hike raises the cost of every floating-rate facility that closes or resets this quarter, and the elevated 10-year means term debt and M&A discount rates aren't getting cheaper on their own either.

None of this is a crisis — equities are down modestly from records, not in freefall, and the labor market backdrop is genuinely strong — but it does mean capital availability now depends more on deal quality and structure than on the tide lifting all boats.

For borrowers, that argues for locking in structure and pricing you can live with today rather than waiting on relief that isn't showing up on schedule. For buyers and sponsors, it argues for underwriting exits at today's multiples rather than last year's.

Kairos Power — Up to $100 Million (Equity + In-Kind Engineering Services

Kairos Power, a 10-year-old Alameda, California company developing fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature nuclear reactors, received a $70 million equity investment from Samsung C&T as part of a broader deal that also includes in-kind engineering services, bringing the combined value to as much as $100 million.

Why It's Notable: This is strategic equity from an industrial conglomerate, not a traditional VC round — a structure worth watching as more infrastructure-heavy, AI-adjacent companies look beyond pure financial sponsors for capital with engineering and supply-chain muscle attached. It's also a direct beneficiary of the same AI power-demand buildout that's making data-center IPO investors nervous, which is its own useful contrast.

Paramount / Warner Bros. Discovery — $81 Billion

Paramount settled an antitrust suit brought by 12 states, clearing the way for David Ellison's $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, in exchange for concessions including $1.5 billion in additional U.S. production spending, a commitment to 30 films annually, and an editorial-independence board for CNN and CBS News.

Strategic Rationale: Consolidation in traditional media continues even as the antitrust environment gets more demanding — the deal cleared not by shrinking in size but by accepting specific, enforceable operating commitments.

Smaller / Undisclosed:

Jefferies Credit Partners

Targeting up to $4 billion in European direct-lending capacity, announced September 9, 2026.

Altitude Take: Another large platform doubling down on direct lending capacity even as pricing gets more competitive — a sign the asset class isn't slowing down, just getting more crowded at the top end.

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To your growth,

Thanks for reading! If this resonated, forward it to a founder, operator, or finance lead who's still waiting on a rate cut to fix their plan. Or pass along the whole issue — the more people who are underwriting reality rather than hope, the better this market works for everyone.