Apollo economist warns AI boom may be unsustainable as stocks tumble

Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, spent the past week issuing warnings about the AI boom. His central claim is that the numbers powering the AI trade are starting to wobble. A flat curve where a steep one was expected On Tuesday, Slok flagged a recent slowdown in the growth of token spending. In AI, tokens are the small chunks of text that models process, and customers typically pay by the token. Slok described the demand curve for compute as flat and highly sensitive to price changes. A price-sensitive buyer is one who walks away the moment the bill goes up. If AI customers behave that way, providers cannot easily raise prices to recoup what they have spent. According to the research findings, this flattening had become visible by late October 2026. Token spending growth slowed over that period and became increasingly tied to pricing. Slok also appeared on Bloomberg on October 22, 2026. There he described a significant gap between the massive capital spending of hyperscalers and the stagnant productivity seen across the broader economy. The S&P 493 problem The sharpest part of Slok’s argument concerns what he calls the S&P 493. That is the S&P ...