Catenaa, Wednesday, July 22, 2026– Meta Platforms has an off-balance-sheet debt of $420 billion, as GPUs and servers not delivered under long-term contracts are not included in the balance sheet.
A report by Nikkei Asia said that Meta’s balance sheet shows that the company has about $58.7 billion in long-term debt, while it has another $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, which has grown substantially since 2022.
Publicly traded companies are required to report the amount of debt they are incurring. But under accounting rules, equipment such as graphics processing units and servers that are under long-term contracts but not yet delivered is treated as an off-balance-sheet item.
Meta and other companies disclose future debt in annotations on their financial statements.
When Meta’s GPUs are delivered and the data centers become operational, this hidden debt will begin to appear on the quarterly balance sheet.
Meta is one of five companies, the others being Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle, analyzed in the Nikkei Asia report.
The five companies, all of which are making significant investments in AI infrastructure, have a collective $1.65 trillion in debt that is not reflected on the companies’ balance sheets.
Meta stock is down 4.5% so far this year on fears that the company is taking on too much debt as it invests in AI infrastructure.
Meta Platforms shows no appetite to slow its spending. The company spent $72 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, most of it related to AI, and said in its first-quarter report that it would spend between $125 billion and $145 billion this year.
Its $50 billion Hyperion data center planned for Louisiana is getting a lot of attention. The center was first announced as a $27 billion project funded by Meta’s joint venture with Blue Owl Capital.
But in June, Meta announced it was expanding the project from a 2-gigawatt center to 5 gigawatts of capacity as it seeks to build out enough AI infrastructure to meet demand.
Blue Owl and its partners are funding the construction, allowing the project to remain off Meta’s balance sheet. Blue Owl will own 80% of Hyperion, with Meta owning the remaining 20%.
There are only 30 companies in the world with an entire valuation of more than $420 billion, so when Meta takes on that much debt that hasn’t even made it to its balance sheet yet, it can seem pretty scary.
Meta is making huge, long-term commitments based on the idea that AI demand will justify the infrastructure. It appears to be transitioning its business away from the so-called metaverse toward hyperscaler services.
That means investors should be prepared for lower margins, perhaps as early as when the company reports second-quarter earnings after the market closes on July 29.
Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney recently told CNBC that he doubts that Meta will attempt to compete head-to-head with Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet — the three largest hyperscalers by market share.
Instead, he sees Meta attempting to challenge neocloud providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius Group in offering AI-specific computing products, including AI chips and systems.
