Hidden debt among U.S. technology giants has climbed to an estimated $1.65 trillion, driven by surging artificial intelligence investments—now surpassing those companies' declared on-balance-sheet debt, according to a Nikkei study.
The off-balance-sheet liabilities grew eightfold over roughly four years, coinciding with a sharp increase in capital deployment into AI infrastructure across the sector.
Large tech companies are using their balance sheets as financial backstops, allowing unproven AI firms to borrow at lower rates. That arrangement creates substantial contingent liabilities for the larger companies guaranteeing those obligations.
Meta Platforms carries an estimated $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt—nearly triple the debt recorded on its financial statements.
The opaque nature of these liabilities makes it difficult for investors to gauge the true financial exposure of these companies. Standard debt metrics do not capture the full scope of these commitments.
The surge in debt issuance by U.S. tech firms is affecting the broader credit market, pushing up risk metrics for some traditionally lower-risk issuers.
Moody's warned separately that most financial firms' reliance on a small number of foundation AI model and cloud computing providers creates systemic dependency—a concentration risk that cuts across institutions.
From a lender's perspective, technology disruption typically builds slowly before accelerating sharply, according to Ankura, a finding that points to the need for closer scrutiny of AI-driven credit exposures before stress arrives.
