What is off-balance-sheet debt in the context of Big Tech's AI buildout?
Off-balance-sheet liabilities represent binding, long-term financial commitments—primarily multi-decade data center leases, power purchase agreements, and guaranteed hardware purchase commitments—that appear in SEC filing footnotes rather than on the primary corporate balance sheet, obscuring a company's true financial leverage.
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The $1.65 Trillion Time Bomb: The Off-Balance-Sheet Debt Powering the AI BoomBig Tech carries $1.65 trillion in hidden off-balance-sheet compute obligations, exceeding its $1.35 trillion in reported debt. What happens next?
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