Off the books

Three ways debt stays off the books

Leases signed, not started

A company signs a 15- or 20-year lease on a data centre that hasn't been built yet. Nothing appears on its balance sheet until the building is handed over. Five companies have $1.3tn of these.

Guarantees

A company promises to cover a shortfall if a tenant stops paying or a building turns out to be worth less than agreed. It records nothing unless a payment becomes "probable", so on a good day these are invisible.

Joint ventures and special vehicles

A separate company owns the data centre or the chips and does the borrowing. The tech company is the tenant, and often the guarantor, but not the owner, so the debt sits in someone else's accounts.

None of this is hidden: every headline number below is in a filing. The point is that it sits outside the debt figures most people look at. When demand holds, nobody pays anything extra. If demand disappoints, the guarantees turn into payments at the worst moment, landing on companies whose cash flow is already negative.

Leases signed but not started

The amount each company has agreed to pay under leases that begin later. It moves onto the balance sheet as each building is handed over.

Microsoft $364.6bn¹ 30 Sep 2026. Primarily data centres, starting fiscal 2027 to 2034, terms up to 20 years.
Meta $355.7bn¹ 30 Sep 2026. Data centres, energy and network infrastructure, starting 2026 to 2036, terms up to 30 years.
Oracle $288bn² 31 Aug 2026. Substantially all data centres, starting late 2026 to fiscal 2029, terms 15 to 19 years.
Amazon $164.9bn³ 30 Sep 2026. Non-cancellable leases, $114.8bn of it due after 2030.
Alphabet $130.5bn¹ 30 Sep 2026. Data centres and energy infrastructure, starting 2026 to 2031, terms up to 26 years.

Guarantees written for others

Maximum exposure, before anything is recovered by re-letting or selling the asset. Nothing has been paid on any of these.

Nvidia $108.5bn⁴ $105bn behind OpenAI's leases at SB Energy's Ohio campus, plus $3.5bn of land, power and shell guarantees for AI-cloud partners. Separately, $36bn of commitments to buy back cloud capacity from those partners.
Alphabet $64.2bn¹ $48bn of data-centre backstops (with $27.7bn more agreed) plus $16.2bn of energy-equipment guarantees.
Meta $41.5bn⁵ Residual value guarantees on its Louisiana and Texas joint ventures. Its maximum exposure to the two ventures, including leases and funding, is $68.4bn.
Broadcom $29bn⁶ Backstop of one customer's five-year AI-rack leases with Apollo. Broadcom named the customer as Anthropic on its earnings call.

The vehicles: who owns what

Each entry says who uses the asset, who owns it, who lent the money and what the tech company has promised. The label on each line shows how sure we are.

In the filings: Stated in a company filing or a company's own announcement.
Reported: Reported by named press or analysts, citing documents or people familiar; not confirmed by the companies.
Inferred: Our reading of the evidence. No source states it directly.

Hyperion (Beignet Investor)

Richland Parish, Louisiana · used by Meta

Owners: Blue Owl funds 80%, Meta 20%In the filings
Debt: $27.3bn of A+ bonds at 6.581%, due 2049In the filings
Who holds it: PIMCO anchored the bonds. BlackRock is reported to have bought more than $3bn. The other holders were sold privately and are not disclosed.Reported
The promise: Meta leases the whole campus and guarantees part of its value for 16 years. We put Meta's share at about $28bn, from its $41.5bn total less El Paso's ~$13bn.Inferred

Sources^5,7,8,9

El Paso venture

El Paso, Texas · used by Meta

Owners: BlackRock funds 80%, Meta 20%In the filings
Debt: $12.5bn debt financing within ~$14bn of development costIn the filings
Who holds it: Not disclosed.Inferred
The promise: Meta is the sole tenant on four-year renewable leases and guarantees ~$13bn of residual value.In the filings

Sources^5,9

PORTS Technology Campus

Pike County, Ohio · used by OpenAI

Owners: SB Energy (SoftBank group) is the landlordIn the filings
Debt: Not yet financed in the market. SB Energy delayed its IPO in September.Reported
Who holds it: Not yet known.Inferred
The promise: Nvidia guarantees up to $105bn of OpenAI's lease and power payments over 20 years, from fiscal 2029, in exchange for exclusive use of Nvidia hardware. OpenAI must reimburse Nvidia for anything it pays.In the filings

Sources^4,10,11

Project Jupiter

Doña Ana County, New Mexico · used by Oracle, for OpenAI capacity

Owners: Blue Owl, through its STACK Infrastructure unit, with about $3bn of equityReported
Debt: About $18bn of construction loans at SOFR + 2.50% from about 20 banksReported
Who holds it: Agents SMBC, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs and MUFG; Santander and Jefferies in the syndicate. Banks have been unable to sell the loans on, and some debt has traded near 80 cents.Reported
The promise: Oracle is the tenant. It served a force-majeure notice in September over power delays, which can push back full rent.Reported

Sources^11,12,13,14

AI XPV, first tranche

Fluidstack-run sites · used by Anthropic

Owners: Apollo is the investor partner; Blackstone's credit business is named as an initial AI XPV investorIn the filings
Debt: $35bn first tranche buying Broadcom-designed AI racks, leased to Anthropic over five yearsIn the filings
Who holds it: Apollo-managed funds; the split with Blackstone is not disclosed.Reported
The promise: Broadcom backstops up to $29bn of the lease payments, roughly 85% of what is owed.In the filings

Sources^6,15,16

Valor Compute Infrastructure

xAI's second data centre · used by xAI

Owners: Valor fund, with Nvidia as an anchor investorIn the filings
Debt: $5.4bn of GPU purchases, $3.5bn financed by Apollo funds, on a triple-net lease to xAIIn the filings
Who holds it: Apollo-managed funds.In the filings
The promise: xAI pays the lease and all running costs. Bloomberg separately reported a ~$20bn Colossus 2 vehicle ($7.5bn equity, $12.5bn debt, Nvidia up to $2bn); how far the two overlap is unclear.Reported

Sources^17,18

Amazon GPU sale-and-leaseback

US data centres · used by Amazon

Owners: A new financing vehicle; investors not namedReported
Debt: About $8bn of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chipsReported
Who holds it: Not known.Inferred
The promise: Amazon would lease the chips back. Reported as under discussion; neither company has confirmed it.Reported

Sources¹⁹

Where we can't tell

Who holds most of Hyperion’s $27.3bn of bonds. PIMCO anchored the deal and BlackRock is reported to hold more than $3bn. The rest went to private investors who are not disclosed, and the offering documents sit in a data room.^8,9
Which projects make up Oracle’s $288bn. The filing names no sites or landlords. Project Jupiter is one; we suspect most of the rest are campuses built for OpenAI, but Oracle’s filings never name OpenAI as a counterparty.^2,20
Who sits behind Nvidia’s AI-cloud agreements. Nvidia has $36bn of commitments to buy capacity back from “select AI cloud partners” and guarantees $3.5bn of their land and power costs, but it does not name them.⁴
Which landlords Alphabet is backstopping. The $48bn is disclosed as a total. Individual deals surface only in the counterparties’ own filings, such as Fluidstack’s leases at Cipher Digital.¹
Who would buy Jupiter’s loans. About 20 banks are holding more Oracle-linked project debt than they planned. The buyers of the pieces that traded near 80 cents have not been named.^12,14
Whether Amazon’s GPU vehicle exists. It has been reported as under discussion only.¹⁹

How this feeds the watch

Off-balance-sheet structures matter most at stage 2 of the transmission chain, AI-specific credit stress. The early signs are already visible. Project Jupiter's loans have traded near 80 cents, Hyperion's bonds were around 91 cents at the start of October, and the banks that underwrote Jupiter haven't been able to sell it on.^12,14,21 The point at which guarantees start to be called would be a step towards stage 3, forced deleveraging.

Sources

CCIR Monitor: Big Tech's $3.0 trillion in signed AI commitments (from the Q3 2026 10-Qs) (1 November 2026)
Oracle (SEC filing): Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 31 August 2026 (11 September 2026)
Amazon (SEC filing): Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026 (30 October 2026)
StockTitan (NVIDIA Form 10-Q): NVIDIA quarterly report: AI cloud agreements and guarantees (26 August 2026)
TokenPost (summarising Meta's Q3 2026 10-Q): Meta puts maximum exposure to two data center ventures at $68.4 billion (30 October 2026)
R40: Broadcom's 10-Q already disclosed a $29B lease backstop (20 October 2026)
Meta (press release): Meta announces joint venture with funds managed by Blue Owl Capital to develop Hyperion data center (21 October 2025)
IFR: Financing package: Blue Owl Capital/Beignet Investor's US$27.3bn 23.6-year bond (15 December 2025)
AI Tech Model: Meta data center financing: how the JVs work (20 August 2026)
NVIDIA (SEC filing): Form 8-K: residual value guaranties with SB Energy, PORTS Technology Campus, Ohio (17 August 2026)
Reuters: Oracle, Blue Owl project delay sends ripples through AI financing (24 September 2026)
Reuters (citing the Financial Times): Oracle's $18 billion data center debt under pressure (18 September 2026)
InfraCompute: Project Jupiter: New Mexico project loan (30 September 2026)
FinancialMarkets.com (citing The New York Times): Debt on Oracle's New Mexico AI campus has traded near 80 cents (23 October 2026)
CTOL Digital Solutions: Broadcom guarantees up to $29 billion of Anthropic's leases (14 October 2026)
Colocation Scout: Broadcom discloses five-year lease backstop for AI infrastructure financing (12 September 2026)
Apollo (press release): Apollo backs $5.4 billion Valor and xAI data center compute infrastructure transaction with $3.5 billion capital solution (7 January 2026)
PitchBook (citing Bloomberg): Nvidia adds xAI to its growing AI venture portfolio as part of $20B round (8 October 2025)
Shattered (summarising the Financial Times): Amazon's $8B Nvidia chip leaseback deal (2 October 2026)
Zan Digital: OpenAI compute commitments: $720B against $50B revenue (25 October 2026)
AI Market Watch: 1 October 2026 (1 October 2026)