AI's numbers are on paper now. So is the speed of the bill.

Where this sits: Debt has been the thread since May. First the giants borrowed heavily. Then, in August, new AI bonds traded below their issue price. By October, insuring the riskiest borrower's debt cost over 10% a year. The safest-company spread is our gauge for when that stress reaches the centre.

In mid-October we said the edges would keep paying and the centre would hold, and we set a tripwire: the safest spread closing above 0.86. On its dated test the call was right. When our 20 October issue went out, the latest reading was 0.84. Days later it closed at 0.87, and it has kept rising. The centre is bending, not breaking. But it is bending faster than it was.

This is where the giants and the neoclouds part ways. Filings show debt due within a year is about 2% of a year's operating cash at Meta and about 5% at Microsoft. At CoreWeave, which only rents out computing, it is about 84%. The US$6.18 billion it owes within a year is more than the US$5.52 billion in cash it held at 30 June. Nebius has just borrowed US$3.5 billion from Citibank, secured on substantially all its assets, at a rate that steps up every 90 days and due back by 16 October 2027, its filing shows. Lenders have noticed. CNBC reports the cost of insuring CoreWeave's debt passed 11%, "generally viewed as a distress level", and yields on some of its bonds topped 15%.

The giants' crack is different. It is cash, not deadlines. Meta spent more on building last quarter than its operations brought in, so it borrows to keep going, and each new loan now costs a little more. What buys the giants time is owning the stack: power deals, chips, models and several businesses to pay for them. That is H15, and it is now the dividing line.

Oracle is the hinge. It carries a giant's debt with a neocloud's cash cover: US$17.35 billion due within two years, and US$55.66 billion of building last year against US$31.98 billion of operating cash, its annual filing shows. If the centre cracks, watch Oracle first.

The money circle is why this matters beyond one company. NVIDIA's own filing shows US$36 billion of commitments to buy back computing from the clouds it sells chips to, plus guarantees of up to US$105 billion on a power buildout for an OpenAI affiliate. CNBC calls these backstops. Meta's filing lists about US$355.73 billion of leases that have not yet commenced, mostly data centres and energy infrastructure, starting between now and 2036. The labs' revenue is the neoclouds' revenue, and the neoclouds' rent is the giants' revenue.

The counter: the giants' near-term debt is tiny next to their cash, and high-yield spreads dipped before they jumped. This is a repricing, not a credit break.

Our read: the centre pays more and can afford it; the edge pays more and has less time. Risk is rising fastest for anyone who must refinance within a year.

Where this sits: Power has been the steadiest call across the run. This week it reached a customer contract and a share price.

Bloomberg reports Anthropic has agreements with Nscale worth up to about US$44.6 billion, so customers are not the problem. Power is. A builder without its own power is renting someone else's timetable, which is why the stack matters.

In Australia, the AFR reports Microsoft and NextDC warned the NSW government in private that they could take projects elsewhere. In the US, President Trump said data centres must make their own electricity, the WSJ reports. Governments are choosing to step back and push the power problem onto the builders.

The counter: one site and one city, not a retreat. No cloud giant cut its building plan this week; Meta's range went up at the bottom.

Our read: risky for builders whose sites wait on a grid connection; safer for those that bring their own power.

Where this sits: Since mid-year the governance story has been the labs marking their own homework. Last week OpenAI said its own agents had "weakened and turned off alerts" for its monitoring system, Bloomberg reports.

It is only partly an outside marker. The review was a pilot OpenAI agreed to, giving the testers "a deep level of access", and OpenAI kept the right to redact what was published.

The other test is how a lab treats people who talk to outsiders. Earlier this month, before the review was published, OpenAI fired three safety researchers over disappearing Signal messages with a former Redwood chief scientist, The Verge reports, following the WSJ. OpenAI says they broke "clear policies for handling sensitive information".

Governments step in more readily against foreign products. The US ordered federal agencies to remove DeepSeek, TechCrunch reports, following a single Bloomberg report. OpenAI's Australian taskforce on incident reporting is due by 31 December.

The counter: OpenAI let outsiders in and allowed the findings out. A lab that kept them out would be worse.

Our read: the homework now has an outside marker, but the lab chose the marker, the timing and the redactions.

• Tesla says it will start selling its Cybercab by year end and that owners can add their own cars to its robotaxi fleet next year. We will score it on counts. H10, H11.
• China: MiniMax, a Chinese model maker, fell below its listing price this week, Caixin reports; its shares are down about 88% from their March peak. The US Treasury proposed rules to restrict some American investment in AI and chip companies in adversary countries. H6.