How the tool works, and its limits

What a link means

Each link records that one company is exposed to another. It has a direction: the exposed company depends on the other. A link has a type, which decides how stress travels along it.

Equity stake

The exposed company owns part of the other, so it shares in losses of value.

Funding

The exposed company relies on the other’s continued investment or lending.

Lending

The exposed company, or market, has lent to the other.

Customer revenue

The exposed company relies on the other as a customer.

Supply

The exposed company relies on the other for chips, capacity, memory, tools or power.

What the weights mean

Each link is weighted light, medium or heavy. The weight is a judgement of how much of the exposed company’s business or capacity rests on the link, relative to its size, and how hard the link would be to replace. It is not a probability of failure, and it is not an estimate of loss. Two heavy links can be heavy for different reasons: a dependence on one supplier’s chips is different in character from an equity stake.

Companies and markets

Most points on the map are companies. Two are not. Private credit stands for the lenders and investors who finance data centres and GPUs, and Power & grid stands for the electricity supply and connections that data centres need. They are drawn as squares, because they are markets or systems with many participants, not single counterparties.

How a failure spreads

Every company carries two kinds of damage. Financial stress covers value, funding and credit. Service loss covers the ability to keep delivering. Financial stress travels along equity, funding, lending and customer links. Service loss travels along supply links, and also begins when a company’s finances become severe enough to cut its capacity.

Market loss

Values fall and credit tightens. Services keep running, but suppliers under pressure may change prices or terms.

Correlated failure

Stress is passed on rather than absorbed. Contracts fail, and service capacity starts to fall.

AI winter

An assumption, not a forecast: chips, cloud capacity and AI development are depleted together for years, so switching provider no longer helps.

Your firm’s processes depend on service, and may feel commercial pressure first. The borrower, investor and lender routes depend on financial stress. Processes whose underlying model or cloud is unknown are listed separately, because the tool cannot say whether they are reached.

How each link is evidenced

Every link has a reference (R01, R02 and so on) to an evidence register, which records the source, its date, and the date the link was last checked.

Evidence grade

Regulatory filing; company announcement; independent reporting; or analytical inference, where the link is a judgement from general evidence rather than a specific source.

Relationship state

Announced (intended, not yet binding); contracted (agreed, often “up to” future amounts); operational (in place now); or ended. A contract worth up to $20bn is not $20bn of revenue already earned.

What the tool does not do

The map shows connections, not proven contagion. Whether one company’s difficulties would materially affect another depends on things the tool does not model: the size of each exposure, contractual protections, liquidity, how easily a supplier or customer could be replaced, and timing. The tool also takes no account of actions a company might take to prevent or limit a problem. Its colours are prompts to ask why, not measurements.

Reviews and corrections

The relationships are monitored monthly for changes and fully reviewed periodically. Every change to the tool is recorded with its date and reason. The evidence for every link is in the public evidence register, with its change log. If you believe a link is wrong, out of date or missing, please use the suggestion form. Suggestions are reviewed against their sources before anything changes.

The tool is illustrative only and is not advice. See the full disclaimer when you open it. Back to the AI Blast Zone