The authors of the study point out that contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars are being signed by companies that cannot fulfill them using their own financial resources.
“The financial model operates in a closed loop: chip manufacturers finance their clients, who then use these funds to purchase chips, while cloud providers take out loans secured by equipment that may become obsolete before the loan term ends,” the study states.
- The total debt of OpenAI to seven counterparties, including Broadcom ($350 billion), Oracle ($300 billion), Microsoft ($250 billion), Nvidia ($100 billion), AMD ($90 billion), Amazon AWS ($38 billion), and CoreWeave ($22 billion), amounted to $1.15 trillion, which is comparable to the net debt of the six largest corporate borrowers in the world.
- According to Barclays analysts, the total capital expenditures of the five largest tech companies—Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle—will be approximately $390 billion in 2025, $540 billion in 2026, and $615 billion in 2027.
Forecasts indicate that the total volume of investments over three years could reach $1.55 trillion, which accounts for 17% of all capital expenditures by American companies in 2021.
According to Morgan Stanley's calculations, global spending on data centers could reach nearly $3 trillion by 2029, with capital investments from major tech giants amounting to only $1.4 trillion. Economists believe this will create a need for financing from external investors and developers amounting to $1.5 trillion.
