The AI Boom Has a SoftBank Problem

Token spending is rolling over. SoftBank is sitting on $160 billion of debt. And this week's calendar may light the fuse.

On June 9, macro strategist Andreas Steno Larsen posted a chart with one line of commentary: this is the chart everyone should be watching.

The chart is the Silicon Data LLM Token Expenditure Index. Think of it as a meter for how much the world pays for AI inference. It doubled between December and May. In the past few weeks, it rolled over.

Steno’s read: if this keeps falling, the memory, hardware and datacenter trade is over for the cycle.

I think he’s right. But the chart is only the first domino. This piece walks the chain from that one line to the most levered player in the entire AI complex: SoftBank. And it explains why I don’t see a path where the AI trade keeps climbing and SoftBank stays safe at the same time.