Big Tech uses guarantees to keep $300bn AI exposure off balance sheets
$300B. That's how much Big Tech is keeping off the balance sheet through AI financing guarantees — and it's reshaping how the buildout gets funded.
Why it matters
Tech giants are using corporate credit guarantees to fund AI infrastructure below the waterline, lowering financing costs while obscuring the true scale of AI capex from investors and regulators. This is a material shift in how the $1T+ compute buildout is being financed.
The key facts
5 to know$300B in AI exposure being kept off balance sheets via guarantees
Wall Street financing structure: credit guarantees enable cheaper funding for subsidiaries/special-purpose entities
Implications: opacity in AI capex reporting; underreporting of true infrastructure spending to markets and regulators
Date: September 2026 — suggests this has become normalized practice, not a one-off
Audience: practitioners budgeting AI infrastructure, investors evaluating tech capex, regulators tracking spending
Go to the source
Financial Times Technologyft.com
Publisher excerpt: Wall Street finds new way to turn tech giants’ credit strength into cheaper funding for AI build-out