Five tech giants are hiding $1.65tn in AI debt, using the trick that toppled Enron
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 Enron echo
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.”
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