Breaking Down $1.65 Trillion of Big Tech AI Spending · Finterm

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Breaking Down $1.65 Trillion of Big Tech AI Spending

Summary

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle have disclosed $1.6507 trillion of<br>future contract payments: $821.4 billion of uncommenced leases and $829.2 billion of<br>purchase and construction commitments.

The total measures contracts signed across many years.<br>It is not cash already spent, a bill due today, or a balance-sheet debt balance.<br>The companies report about $430.0 billion of interest-bearing borrowings and<br>$1.3500 trillion of total liabilities .

The commitments equal 98.9% of the companies’ combined latest annual revenue and<br>62.1% of combined assets . Total liabilities equal 80.9% of annual revenue, while<br>interest-bearing borrowings equal 25.8%. The payment periods range from less than one<br>year to as long as 30 years.

The filings do not label every contract as AI-specific.<br>The total is best read as a broad measure of the infrastructure, data-center capacity,<br>energy, equipment, inventory, content, and services being secured during the AI<br>buildout.

Evidence: The sources and method appendix contains<br>the filing links, category definitions, calculations, and timing disclosures.<br>We used the Finterm CLI to locate the disclosures and checked each amount against the<br>linked primary filing.

Disclaimer: This is accounting and public-filing research, not investment advice.

The $1.65 Trillion Is a Contract Stack

The five-company total comes from two nearly equal categories.1

Figure 1. The $1.6507 trillion total consists of $821.4 billion of uncommenced leases<br>and $829.2 billion of purchase and construction commitments.<br>Company details and reporting periods appear in<br>C1.

The first category is rent promised under leases for assets that are not yet available<br>for use. A data center may still be in design or under construction, so the lease has<br>been signed but has not commenced.

The second category covers contractual commitments to buy infrastructure, equipment,<br>computing capacity, energy, inventory, content, construction, and other goods or<br>services. The supplier still owes performance, and the company generally pays as<br>equipment, capacity, power, or services are delivered.

The sum is nominal: a dollar due next year and a dollar due decades from now each count<br>as one dollar. The calculation does not discount future payments, subtract the value of<br>assets and services received, or adjust for contract amendments and cancellation<br>provisions.

The total also mixes reporting dates.<br>Most amounts come from March 31, 2026 filings, Oracle’s figures come from May 31, 2026,<br>and Microsoft’s purchase and construction commitments come from June 30, 2025. The<br>number is therefore a defined snapshot, not a same-day consolidated balance sheet.

Contracts, Liabilities, and Borrowings Answer Different Questions

Three numbers describe three different parts of the companies’ finances:

$1.6507 trillion of future contracts measures nominal payments promised under<br>selected lease and purchase agreements

$1.3500 trillion of total liabilities measures all recognized obligations on the<br>balance sheets at the stated reporting dates

$430.0 billion of interest-bearing borrowings measures bonds, notes, loans,<br>commercial paper, and similar funded financing

Figure 2. Future contracts are not the same measure as total liabilities or<br>interest-bearing borrowings.<br>Optional, noncontractual spending plans contribute zero to the $1.6507 trillion total.

Borrowings sit inside total liabilities.<br>The rest of the $1.3500 trillion includes accounts payable, accrued compensation,<br>deferred revenue, taxes, recognized lease liabilities, and other obligations arising in<br>normal operations.2

The $1.6507 trillion contract total mostly sits outside that comparison.<br>It combines payments for leases that have not commenced with purchase contracts under<br>which the counterparties still owe assets or services.<br>Some of those commitments will create recognized liabilities later, but not all will<br>become debt.

How Each Category Reaches the Financial Statements

The accounting sequence changes how each dollar should be interpreted.

Interest-Bearing Borrowings

A borrowing is funded financing.<br>The company has received cash or another financial asset and owes principal, usually<br>with interest. The balance sheet records the obligation when the financing occurs.

Uncommenced Leases

An uncommenced lease covers an asset that the company cannot yet use.<br>Under U.S. lease accounting, the company generally recognizes a lease liability and a<br>right-of-use asset when the lease commences .3

The liability recorded at...