Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

	Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding(asia.nikkei.com)
	355 points by NordStreamYacht 1 day ago \| 247 comments
	tl;dr: Off-balance-sheet debt at five major US tech giants — including Meta and Oracle — has grown eightfold in about four years to roughly $1.65 trillion, driven by AI-related obligations like data center leases and GPU supply contracts. Meta alone carries about $420 billion in hidden liabilities, nearly triple its reported debt. The opacity of these commitments is making it harder for investors to gauge the true financial risk of the AI buildout.
	HN Discussion: ↑Risk will ultimately fall on banks or taxpayers when the AI bubble collapses ↓Sophisticated investors already know about these debts, so opacity is overstated ↓The US government will bail out or nationalize these companies, making the debt irrelevant ↑Investments won't be paid back and a crash is inevitable, causing widespread damage •Correction on financing structure: private credit, not banks, holds the actual risk