U.S. technology companies are financing the AI data-center buildout through leases, joint ventures, guarantees and construction commitments that leave much of the associated exposure outside the debt totals most visible in their financial statements. Regulatory filings from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Oracle show $2.13 trillion in data-center borrowing, signed leases, hardware procurement and construction commitments as of the second quarter of 2026, compared with $1.35 trillion in combined reported liabilities.
The total, compiled from the companies’ disclosures, has risen sharply from $1.02 trillion a year earlier. About $445.8 billion was described as debt already raised, while $831 billion consisted of signed leases that had yet to begin and therefore had not become balance-sheet liabilities. Adding commitments for GPUs, data-center construction and related equipment takes the figure to $2.13 trillion.
The financing methods give major technology groups access to capital for an infrastructure race expected to cost trillions of dollars, while shifting part of the immediate borrowing burden to private-credit funds, infrastructure owners and other counterparties. They also make straightforward comparisons of companies’ stated debt less useful: a firm may report modest bond borrowings while holding much larger long-term obligations through lease structures or guarantees.
Meta’s $27.3 billion Hyperion structure
Meta’s planned Hyperion data center in Louisiana offers one of the clearest examples. The project raised $27.3 billion in bonds through a chain of entities that included seven Delaware companies bearing the name “Beignet,” according to corporate registrations and Meta’s financial disclosures. Meta reported a $2.37 billion investment connected to the arrangement rather than the full bond amount as its own debt.
The financing-side owners hold 80% of the joint venture and Meta holds 20%, according to the transaction structure described in the materials. Meta concluded that it was not the venture’s primary beneficiary for accounting purposes, allowing the venture to remain unconsolidated. Beignet Investor issued the project bonds, while the facility itself was initially registered under Laidley LLC.
The bonds were issued through Rule 144A, a private-placement market generally limited to large institutional buyers. Their terms were not distributed through a standard public-offering process. Meta initially referred to the arrangement in a quarterly filing as a subsequent event; later disclosures grouped it within a broader “net lease data center” category.
The project’s financing nonetheless depends heavily on Meta’s payments. A Meta affiliate, Pelican Leap, signed a four-year lease beginning in 2029, with rent flowing through the project entities to meet bond principal and interest. The documents describe $12.3 billion of rent over the first four years, or roughly $3.08 billion annually, alongside an additional return for the venture’s equity providers.
Hyperion’s bonds carry a 6.581% coupon and mature in May 2049. They amortize over 24 years, meaning principal is paid down gradually rather than in a single payment at maturity. The initial lease lasts only four years, though Meta has options to extend occupancy for up to 20 years. A residual-value guarantee, capped at roughly $28 billion and declining with time, is intended to protect lenders if the tenant does not renew and the asset’s value falls below an agreed threshold.
A similar Meta-linked project in El Paso, Texas, known as Sopaipilla, began with a planned $12 billion issuance and used an equivalent 80/20 ownership division. The financing-side interest moved from Blue Owl to BlackRock, according to the materials.
Different routes to similar exposure
The five companies are using different accounting and funding approaches, but the shared result is a large gap between conventional debt figures and future cash obligations.
Microsoft’s reported debt declined to $40.3 billion from $44.9 billion over nearly two years, while its finance-lease liabilities rose to $62.9 billion from $27.1 billion. Finance leases are recorded on the balance sheet, unlike many unstarted operating leases, but Microsoft presents them within other current and long-term liabilities rather than a single debt category. The distinction affects how easily readers can see the scale of obligations linked to infrastructure.
Alphabet has relied on payment guarantees that enable counterparties to borrow. Its credit-derivative notional amount increased to $43.8 billion from $16.9 billion in six months, while the amount recognized on its balance sheet was $815 million. The difference reflects the accounting value of the guarantee rather than the full potential amount covered.
Amazon has used more conventional financing alongside leases, issuing more than $50 billion of debt in March 2026 for facilities and reporting $106.3 billion in lease commitments that had not yet reached its balance sheet. Oracle disclosed $260 billion in lease commitments, largely tied to data centers on 15- to 19-year terms that begin in fiscal 2027.
The Bank for International Settlements characterized arrangements that are economically similar to debt but largely remain outside corporate balance sheets as “shadow borrowing” in its March 2026 Quarterly Review. In its subsequent annual report, the BIS included AI-bubble and circular-financing risks among the financial-system vulnerabilities it was monitoring.
Capital spending is outpacing internally generated cash
The financing surge reflects the scale of projected AI spending. Morgan Stanley estimated that technology companies would spend about $2.9 trillion on AI by 2028 while generating roughly $1.4 trillion internally, leaving a potential $1.5 trillion funding gap.
Across the five companies, AI-related capital expenditure rose by more than 1.5 times over the past two years, according to the supplied figures, while operating cash flow increased by less than 60%. Share repurchases fell from $48 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, including $20 billion from Meta, to $4.6 billion in the first quarter of 2026.
Direct bond issuance has also accelerated. The five companies averaged about $31.3 billion annually between 2020 and 2023, before issuance reached $189.7 billion by July 2026. S&P Global Ratings lowered Oracle to BBB- in July, placing the company one step above speculative grade and increasing the sensitivity of its funding costs to further deterioration.
Amazon’s recent borrowing illustrated a less accommodating credit market. Demand for its bonds, measured by oversubscription, reportedly declined from 5.3 times in November 2025 to 1.6 times in July 2026. Its July deal required 18 to 21 basis points of new-issue concession, compared with roughly 4 basis points across the broader investment-grade market.
Private capital moves deeper into data centers
Private credit and infrastructure funds have become major financiers of the buildout. Global data-center mergers and acquisitions reached $49 billion in 2021 and $48 billion in 2022, with private sources providing 91% of 2022 capital across 187 deals. After declining to $26 billion in 2023, data-center M&A rose to $73 billion in 2024 and set another record in 2025, according to the supplied data. From early 2024 through mid-2026, 575 transactions totaled $151 billion, with 84% financed privately.
Rule 144A data-center issuance surpassed $40 billion by the end of 2025, having been near zero previously. The materials project that AI infrastructure could draw $800 billion from private credit during the next three years.
That dependence creates a different set of vulnerabilities from conventional corporate borrowing. The International Monetary Fund estimated that 60% of planned data centers had not broken ground even though related debt had already been sold. Hyperion is expected to be completed around 2029, while Oracle’s disclosed leases are due to start in fiscal 2027.
Asset life is another pressure point. Companies generally depreciate GPUs over five to six years, while some assessments place their useful life closer to two or three years. The Hyperion bonds, by contrast, run until 2049. If computing hardware becomes obsolete faster than expected, operators may need fresh capital for replacements while continuing to make payments on infrastructure built for earlier equipment cycles.
Power demand adds a practical constraint
The expansion also places data-center developers in direct competition for power, land and grid connections. Electricity demand from data centers has been estimated at as much as 415 terawatt-hours globally two years ago, with energy-monitoring groups projecting annual consumption of 945 terawatt-hours by the end of the decade.
That demand can affect cryptocurrency mining operations in regions where miners and data centers seek the same large-scale power contracts. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work networks used roughly 190 terawatt-hours of electricity late last year, according to the supplied estimates. Mining operators with flexible load can curtail operations when power prices rise or grids require capacity, but smaller operators remain more exposed to expensive electricity and constrained interconnection access.
The data-center funding boom therefore reaches beyond technology balance sheets. Long-dated lease obligations, private-credit structures and power agreements are becoming central to how AI capacity is built—and to which businesses can secure the financing and electricity needed to operate alongside it.
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