Five Tech Giants Are Hiding $1.65 Trillion in AI Debt, Using the Trick that Toppled Enron
July 22nd, 2026Via: The Next Web:
Look at what Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle officially owe, and the numbers seem large but manageable. Look off the books, and a second, bigger pile of debt appears.
A Nikkei study put that hidden figure at $1.65 trillion, up roughly eightfold in four years. It is more than the $1.35 trillion the five report outright.
The money is tied up in off-balance-sheet vehicles, the same kind of structure Enron used to hide debt before it collapsed 25 years ago. Back then it was fraud. Now, tightened rules and fuller disclosures make it legal.
The tools are still there, though. “Enron’s crime wasn’t having special purpose vehicles,” analyst Gil Luria told Bloomberg Law. “Enron’s crime was hiding them.”
The mechanics are simple. A company packages the debt for chips, servers, and power into a separate legal entity, often a joint venture, so the cost never flows through its own accounts.
