Off-balance sheet commitments tied to AI hit $3.1 trillion across nine tech giants

Nine of the biggest names in tech have quietly stacked up roughly $3.1 trillion in financial commitments that don’t appear on their balance sheets, nearly all of it tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. The figure grew by $1.3 trillion in just three months. The companies in question: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, and SpaceX. Their collective off-balance-sheet obligations now outweigh their reported on-balance-sheet leases and long-term debts by roughly threefold, even as their combined annual capital expenditure sits around $600 billion. What’s actually hiding off the books The $3.1 trillion breaks down into two main buckets. About $1.2 trillion consists of uncommenced leases, essentially rental agreements for data centers, land, and facilities that haven’t kicked in yet. The remaining $1.9 trillion sits in purchase obligations, contractual commitments to buy chips, equipment, and other infrastructure components. A Morgan Stanley report pegged the total at over $3.1 trillion when factoring in guarantees and leases from hyperscalers and chip firms. Hyperscalers’ guarantees alone reportedly exceed $2.7 trillion. These numbers sit in the f...