Catenaa, Wednesday, December 24, 2025 – Tech companies have shifted more than $120 billion of data center spending off their balance sheets by using special-purpose vehicles funded by Wall Street investors.
The Financial Times reported that Meta, Elon Musk’s xAI, Oracle, and data centre operator CoreWeave have led the way on complex financing deals to shield their companies from the large borrowing needed to build AI data centres, adding to concerns about the financial risks of their huge bet on artificial intelligence.
Financial institutions, including Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo, Blue Owl Capital, and US banks such as JPMorgan, have supplied at least $120 billion in debt and equity for these tech groups’ computing infrastructure, according to a Financial Times analysis.
That money is channelled through special purpose holding companies known as SPVs.
The rush of financings, which do not appear on the tech companies’ balance sheets, may be obscuring the risks that these groups are taking on, and who will be on the hook if AI demand disappoints.
SPV structures also increase the danger that financial stress for AI operators in the future could cascade across Wall Street in unpredictable ways.
“Eighteen months ago this would have been unfathomable, and fast forward to today, it’s very much the norm,” a senior executive at one of the large financing institutions told The Financial Times about the tens of billions of dollars flowing into SPVs to fund data centres.
“The tech industry can access meaningfully more capital than any other because of the credit profile,” he added.
Silicon Valley giants have traditionally generated a lot of cash and had little debt, giving these companies excellent credit ratings and high confidence from investors.
The race to secure computing power for advanced AI has pushed tech groups to borrow more than ever before, however. Tapping private capital funding through off-balance sheet structures protects companies’ credit ratings and flatters their financial metrics.
