The credit risk for technology firms expanding their artificial intelligence capacity is climbing as a new analysis reveals a vast majority of their infrastructure obligations remain hidden from corporate balance sheets. J.P. Morgan estimates that the seven largest AI companies have pledged $4.5 trillion for future data center leases and hardware, with just 15% of those total liabilities recorded as debt. This disparity has caused the cost to insure the companies’ debt against default to rise, while hedge funds have reduced their exposure to the sector by 8%, the steepest drop since 2016.
The largest of these off-book obligations belong to Google, at $1.08 trillion, followed by Meta at $810 billion and Microsoft at $575 billion. For some smaller players, the gap is more extreme; Anthropic’s off-balance-sheet commitments are more than 100 times its recorded debt. These multiyear agreements secure scarce chips and power capacity, including data center leases that can extend as long as 30 years. Among the five largest operators, roughly 70% of their $1.3 trillion in future lease commitments were added within the last year.
