Off-balance-sheet debt tied to artificial intelligence at major US tech companies has swelled by about 90% in six months, reaching roughly $3.2 trillion, according to a Nikkei report. The figure covers commitments and obligations, not money booked directly on company balance sheets.
Those hidden AI commitments now equal about 80% of the assets held by companies including Google and Meta, the report says. The scale of the number has started to alarm investors, who are watching tech giants pour seemingly endless money into AI infrastructure such as data centers.
How the AI spending boom got this big
The expansion of AI data centers has pushed tech companies into long-term commitments that stretch beyond their reported finances. Nikkei's reporting points to Amazon data centers in the US state of Indiana as an example of the kind of infrastructure absorbing this spending.
As those obligations accumulate off the balance sheet, they raise questions about how much future cash flow is already promised to AI projects before a single dollar of revenue comes back. The near-doubling in six months shows how quickly those promises are stacking up.
Key AI debt figures
Nikkei's numbers give a sense of the scale, though the report does not break down how each company contributes:
- $3.2 trillion: approximate hidden AI-related debt at US tech giants
- 90%: growth in those commitments and obligations over six months
- 80%: share of company assets those obligations now represent
