How Artificial Intelligence Enabled Strategy to Raise $15 Billion for Its Bitcoin Strategy

Michael Saylor explained that the firm leveraged artificial intelligence to design a new class of preferred securities, enabling the company to raise approximately $15 billion for its Bitcoin strategy.

Strategy’s executive chairman noted that the company’s traditional financing channels, such as common-stock sales and convertible bonds, had become increasingly difficult to scale, prompting a shift toward artificial intelligence.

During an appearance on the The Diary of a CEO podcast on August 6, Saylor stated, “I used AI to raise $15 billion last year.”

Saylor clarified that the $15 billion figure represented capital raised through securities, not personal income or corporate profit. He noted that Strategy ultimately sold approximately $10.5 billion of one preferred-stock instrument and roughly $4 billion through related products.

Saylor did not initially name the AI system. Later in the discussion, when host Steven Bartlett asked whether he was referring to ChatGPT and OpenAI after Saylor described designing an unusual variable-dividend preferred stock, Saylor confirmed the reference.

Strategy turned to AI after its old Bitcoin playbook hit limits

According to Saylor, the initiative commenced in early 2025 as the firm sought alternative methods to finance its Bitcoin acquisitions.

By that time, Strategy had already expanded significantly into common-stock issuance and had become one of the world’s largest issuers of convertible bonds.

Those instruments had driven much of the firm’s initial Bitcoin accumulation, but Saylor believed neither the public equity market nor the convertible bond market could support the scale of capital the firm intended to raise next.

He stated:

“We needed to invent a new type of security, a new type of credit instrument that we could use to borrow money to buy more Bitcoin.”

He continued that he began using AI to explore the design of preferred shares, which are securities capable of combining characteristics of both debt and equity.

This process first produced STRK, a convertible preferred stock. Strategy subsequently moved toward a structure designed to behave more like short-duration credit and to trade near its $100 stated value.

To maintain the price’s relative stability, Strategy developed a preferred stock whose dividend rate could be dynamically adjusted according to market conditions.

Saylor noted that the structure was sufficiently novel that conventional financial advisors were skeptical of it.

Their response was that no one had ever attempted this approach before, and people simply do not do that.

Saylor explained that Strategy used AI to work through how the structure could be built within existing securities rules.

He stated:

“We go to the AI. We said, ‘Well, can we do it?’ They’re like, ‘Of course you can do it.'”

This work ultimately contributed to STRC, Strategy’s variable-rate preferred stock.

Saylor stated that Strategy raised approximately $2.5 billion in its initial offering, and subsequently sold roughly $8 billion through additional issuances, bringing the total raised through that instrument to approximately $10.5 billion.

Combined with roughly $4 billion raised through its other preferred securities, the total raised came to approximately $15 billion.

Saylor stated, ‘In essence, we sold $15 billion in credit.’

The result was a new financing channel that complemented Strategy’s common equity and convertible debt markets, providing the company with an additional method to raise capital for Bitcoin purchases.

Saylor’s account also highlights a less conventional application of generative AI in corporate finance. Instead of using the technology to trade assets or forecast prices, Strategy used AI as part of the process to explore how a new security could be structured.

Strategy remains the largest corporate holder of the top cryptocurrency, holding more than 840,000 BTC.

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