Article · Money and markets · Technology
The AI boom meets the cost of debt: Seoul falls 3.7 percent and insuring SoftBank against default costs the most since 2022
On 20 October 2026 South Korea's Kospi index fell 3.73 percent to 5,552.74, data centre company Elice dropped as much as 32 percent on its first trading day, and SoftBank Group's five-year credit default swaps (CDS) reached 432 basis points, the highest since November 2022 (Bloomberg data). The common thread: investors doubt that AI infrastructure built with borrowed money will pay off. At the centre of the strain is the US cloud company CoreWeave, whose bond yields reached as much as 16 percent in mid-October (Reuters).
Until now the AI race asked who would build the most data centres. In mid-October 2026 the market started asking a different question: who pays for them if the money is borrowed. On 20 October that question moved to Asia: the Seoul exchange fell 3.7 percent, and insuring against a SoftBank default became the most expensive in almost four years.