tldr; They used "special-purpose vehicle" to hide the debt. Accounting's version of "anal doesn't count, silly".
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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A bigger factor in AI fraud economy, is the circular fake assets and fake revenue. $1T valuations in top 2 LLM providers implies $50B-$100B eventual recurring profits with little to no reinvestment. $1.75T SpaceX valuation was based entirely on fraud of at least 5x more expensive space data centers than earth and supposed 90% of value of company is based on Grok enterprise TAM. IPO was boosted with fake Anthropic paper lease where they were renting gpus for 5x the cost, and over 2x the list price of on demand rates from Nebius/coreweave, but with instant cancel clauses, and "first 2 months free" scam. 11th hour similar Google deal (who owns 6%+ of spacex) further amplified the SpaceX fraud IPO.
The main circular fraud though, is most of the companies (Nvidia not mentioned) in article put an inflated asset on their balance sheet, while trading revenue credits for those investments. Article's "footnote debt" is largely to serve those revenue credits.
Makes sense. Oligopolies collude. No news there.
I've said it before, I'll say it again...
The country which will win the AI race is the one who wastes the least amount of money on AI infrastructure.
The US will be the biggest loser in this "competition".
It's going to be whichever country has the most human researchers.
Exititis makes accounting look creative.
The AI bubble will pop within the next couple of months. It's pretty interesting, I wonder if we've ever seen an economic bubble so clearly before it comes to an end.
Every crypto bubble?
Why months, not quarters or years?
More like it's already popping. The Korean AI bubble already popped, dragging Intel, AMD, ARM, Nokia and others down by a significant amount. They won't bounce back. SpaceX is going down down down. QE won't save this one because nobody wants USD anymore.
I agree, it's already popping. But the pop is still very, very slow with most investors still in denial and keeping their paragliders open.
Five companies owe more money than their balance sheets admit. A Nikkei analysis of financial footnotes at Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle found $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations tied to AI infrastructure — binding, must-pay commitments parked in the fine print
Good thing I don't invest in these big names, not only because of overvaluation but also because of corruption. My mom told me to be careful with investing because companies go bankrupt but i kinda dismissed her concerns because I am thinking that the days of Enron accounting magic is over. But it looks like it's still alive and well. Although I doubt executives will be held accountable.
I don't know why, but I read this as "Five Guys" and thought holy shit I didn't realize a burger company could be so broke. No wonder their prices are so high!
I am actually thinking ask of these companies imploding would be good for the human race.
Imagine a solid hard reset on the internet? Yes please.
Will this fuck me over yes, but that will be temporary
We gotta start building alternatives already. Us being here on Lemmy is already a start.
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Oh boy I can't wait to see the future of every person under 65 and with a net worth below $100 million get basically vaporized from space. I can't wait to be the bailout source for this... Although I don't think there's enough money in existence to bail this one out.
Don't even talk about bailouts, it's totally unacceptable this time. These companies ARE NOT essential, and are not too big to fail.
Their debts are by Venture Capitalist investors, and by billionaires from the dot com bom. They have the money to fail.
This time we let them fail.
I WANT TO SEE REPO MEN AND BANK OFFICIALS MARCHING INTO MANSIONS TO RECLAIM THE MONEY.
Let some of these assholes live in trailer parks.
The current administration is claiming AI is absolutely essential to our national security, scientific research, energy, and everything else. This is all being done by political appointees who know next to nothing in general, and even less about the history and current state of "AI". Being ordered by people who do not care about wasting taxypayer money or running up absurd deficits. Bailout incoming.
The issue is that they became part of everyone's 401k so the bootlickers and greedy fucks in Congress will tell us they're 100% essential because if they fail you lose your retirement.
I hate this system... Redistribution of wealth for the rich, rugged individualism for the pleb.
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They're such money pits that they can't be bailed out - give them a hundred billion dollars and they'll be back next month for more.
They aren't a functioning business that just needs help getting back to profitability or help with some sort term crisis, they take hundreds of billions and set it on fire.
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We could have avoided it if politicians didn't fell for big tech's tricks...
Politicians didn’t fall for anything. They’re getting kickbacks and are voting accordingly.
This shit led to the Great Depression… I guess it’ll be a Greater Depression, just on figures alone.
C'mon! With Trump in charge, it has to be The Greatest Depression!
"Yes, this is The Greatest Depression. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. Even the best economists, very smart people, they say to me 'Donald, Mr President, who could know?' Nobody could have known this would happen, but they tell me it was caused by Biden. Or Obama. I've also asked the FBI to check Hillary's emails and Hunter's laptop."
"They said it could never happen. It could never be done. But I did it. First one in history to trigger such a great depression. The greatest depression."
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This is why they want to get into your 401(k)s & pension funds. Don't let them.
Oh, I won't.
Mostly because I'm 42, and have no 401k, or pension.
I'm clutching my 10k tightly. They won't be getting my future 2 weeks of groceries!
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I genuinely am having a hard time believing this because the image looks like it was generated... The kind of reality the .01% has shoved us into.
That's because it's from Gadget Review, a website that looks like it uses AI to generate graphics and (at least) augment its articles.
The original article is at least helpfully linked at the top:
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/five-us-tech-giants-hidden-debts-soar-to-1.65tn-on-opaque-ai-funding
Edit: I see Gadget Review pop up more and more and I've started liking their content less and less. The editorial guidelines say they use AI right on the page you linked. And if I scroll down and click on a random article , it's AI generated and based on a tweet by CSAM poster Dom Lucre. It's not the first article I've seen that's basically repeating a tweet from some extreme looking Twitter account either.
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Would be interesting to include anthropic, openai etc in this list
They're not public and aren't forced to report these numbers. But yeah the amount of hidden debt in AI is much higher.
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