MoneySeptember 20, 2026via Financial Times Technology
Big Tech uses guarantees to keep $300bn AI exposure off balance sheets
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.
Key signals
- $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
The hook
$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.
Wall Street finds new way to turn tech giants’ credit strength into cheaper funding for AI build-out