Moody's Found Big Tech's Missing Debt. It Was in the Footnotes.

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Today, we look at the great tech debt.

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Coffee at the ready…

The take: Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Oracle are carrying $662 billion in data centre obligations that don't appear on their balance sheets. And Moody's just decided it's done pretending that's fine.

What happened: Moody's Ratings published a report this week, finding that the top five US hyperscalers have accumulated $969 billion in total future data centre lease commitments, of which $662 billion sits entirely off-balance-sheet because the leases haven't technically started yet.

Why it matters: That $662 billion equals 113% of these companies' combined adjusted debt — invisible to anyone who doesn't read footnotes for a living.

What to watch: The first Moody's rating action on any of the five companies that explicitly cites these leases as a debt factor (that's the moment this moves from warning to consequence).

All five companies declined to comment or did not respond when asked about the Moody's findings.

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Under current accounting rules, a lease liability only hits the books when the lease begins.

Until then — however large the commitment, however binding the contract — it lives in a footnote.

Companies that sign data centre leases years before servers arrive end up with a $662 billion gap between what their balance sheet says and what they actually owe.

That gap wasn't a secret.

Alphabet disclosed $42.6 billion in lease payments not yet on the books in a quarterly filing.

Moody's read that filing. Analysts read it. Nobody adjusted the debt model.

For years, footnote disclosure was enough to satisfy everyone — the companies, the analysts, everyone with a reason to look.

Nobody was asking hard questions.

Nobody needed to.

This week's Moody's report isn't a warning. It's an admission.

Five of the world's most valuable tech companies were priced for years without anyone accounting for $662 billion that doesn't appear on their books.

Pro: These liabilities are disclosed — in footnotes — so sophisticated investors can model the cash exposures before they show up on the balance sheet; the accounting rules are working exactly as designed, not hiding anything.

Con: "Disclosed in a footnote" carries less weight when $662 billion equals 113% of your adjusted debt, and most analysts price off balance sheets, not footnote archaeology.

Our read: The accounting is legal. The leases are legal. Moody's just said it's going to price them like debt anyway.

Alphabet Q3 2025 10-Q — SEC EDGAR

The filing Moody's built its report around. You'll find $42.6 billion in data centre leases that haven't started yet sitting in a footnote, unrecorded on the balance sheet — up from $23.9 billion the quarter before. $18.7 billion in new obligations added in a single quarter.

Big Tech hid debt worth more than it officially reported. [Moody's Ratings, Feb 2026]

Why short-term AI leases broke the accounting rules — Data Centre Dynamics — the rule was written for 10-15 year commercial leases. AI hardware dies in four to six years. That gap is the loophole.

Meta's $27 billion Louisiana bet — and the $28 billion guarantee that doesn't appear anywhere — Meta press release — the shell company structure that Moody's flagged, straight from the source.

How private credit is financing the AI buildout — Global Data Centre Hub — Morgan Stanley, via Global Data Centre Hub, estimates $800 billion in private-credit capital will be needed between 2025 and 2028 to fund AI data centres alone; this is the blueprint.

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