The international business press won’t shut up about the prospects of an AI bubble and investors’ concerns around the “circular” nature of AI. Now, analysis by the Financial Times shows AI’s debt problem is even bigger than we thought.

Tech groups have shifted more than USD 120 bn of AI data-center financing off their balance sheets via special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) funded by outside investors, the FT reports. Oracle makes up just about two-thirds of that.

Who’s footing the bill? Private-credit heavyweights including Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo, and Blue Owl have supplied tens of bns into these structures, binding private markets more tightly to the trajectory of AI infrastructure demand, the salmon-colored paper said.

The rationale: SPVs bankroll capital-hungry data centers while keeping the borrowing off corporate balance sheets, protecting their credit ratings and financial metrics. If demand disappoints, losses land with investors — not the tech firms themselves.

The concern now is not only what would happen to Big Tech if things go awry, but how far-reaching the consequences would be on financial markets.

This is no small-bore financial engineering: Morgan Stanley estimates AI infrastructure buildout could require USD 1.5 tn in external financing. UBS says tech firms had already tapped USD 450 bn from private funds by early 2025 — USD 100 bn more than a year earlier.

OpenAI alone has committed more than USD 1.4 tn in long-term computing contracts across the sector, creating correlated tenant risk if a single major customer stumbles, especially when multiple lenders fund multiple projects tied to the same few buyers.

**We broke down how AI investment has been running on a self-reinforcing loop in Planet Finance last week, explaining how Big Tech funds startups that then pay the same firms for cloud and compute. Off-balance-sheet SPVs don’t break that loop; they let it scale with fewer visible stress signals.

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