Eight companies now list about $3.94 trillion of commitments that are not on their balance sheets, up from $3.56 trillion nine days ago, after quarterly filings not reflected in our earlier count, by our arithmetic. Alphabet’s lines reached $1.06 trillion at 30 September, the first company in our tracker above $1 trillion.
The change is $385.8 billion, or 10.8%, by our arithmetic. It comes entirely from four companies whose latest filings are not reflected in our 22 October count: Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and SpaceX. The total covers purchase commitments, leases signed but not yet started, guarantees and similar lines, read from each company’s latest filing with the SEC.
Short explainer · Big Tech off-book commitments hit $3.94T
A vertical news Short summarising this story with related coverage. Figures come from the companies’ SEC filings; our arithmetic is labelled.
Business Pill · CAPEX AND DEPRECIATION
A short Business Engineer explainer on capital spending and depreciation. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any company or market move in this piece.
The key insight: On the latest quarterly filings, the eight companies in our tracker list about $3.94 trillion of commitments not on their balance sheets, up $385.8 billion in nine days, and Alphabet is the first above $1 trillion, by our arithmetic.
Alphabet’s third-quarter 10-Q lists $924.4 billion of material purchase commitments, of which $802.1 billion relates to multi-year commitments for technical infrastructure and inventory, energy take-or-pay contracts and content licenses. We count the $802.1 billion, the same line we used for June, when it was $707.0 billion.
The filing also lists $130.5 billion of future payments for leases not yet commenced, primarily for data centers and energy infrastructure, up from $85.2 billion in June. It lists $75.7 billion of backstop obligations relating to data centers: $48.0 billion with third-party data center providers, accounted for as credit derivatives, and $27.7 billion of obligations to put in place future backstops, of which $10.0 billion is with Crux AI, a related party.
In Note 10 of the filing, Alphabet’s maximum potential future payments under financial guarantees for energy equipment were $16.2 billion, and under contracts that require it to repurchase previously sold TPU hardware, $6.6 billion; the filing’s summary puts its financial guarantees at $22.8 billion. Future funding commitments for its equity investments were $21.9 billion, and a short-term lease carries a remaining non-cancelable commitment of about $6.0 billion.
Without the two lines newly counted this quarter, the TPU repurchase and future backstops, Alphabet’s total is $1,024.7 billion, by our arithmetic.
Commitments not on the balance sheet by company, latest 10-Q or 10-K as of 31 October 2026, stacked by purchase commitments, leases not yet commenced and guarantees, investment and other lines; the tick marks each company’s total in our 22 October tracker. Totals are FourWeekMBA arithmetic; Microsoft’s purchase and construction lines are from its 30 June 10-K.
What Was Posted on X
Ding Ding Ding: $4.1 trillion, up $1 trillion in 90 days (full post coming)
ZeroHedge’s post of 30 October, quoting its own earlier tally of off-balance-sheet debt. It gives a total of $4.1 trillion, up $1 trillion in 90 days, without a method or company list; this piece compares it with our own count from the filings, which is lower, and says the two are not directly comparable.
Amazon, Microsoft and SpaceX
Amazon’s third-quarter 10-Q commitments table shows $159.6 billion for property and equipment and $94.8 billion of unconditional purchase obligations, against a single $130.1 billion purchase line in June. Leases not yet commenced rose to $164.9 billion from $137.2 billion, and other commitments were $19.0 billion. Its total in our count rose to $438.3 billion from $285.6 billion.
Microsoft’s quarterly filing says it had additional leases, primarily for datacenters, that had not yet commenced of $364.6 billion, against $329.1 billion in June. The 10-Q does not restate its purchase and construction commitments, so we carry the June 10-K figures of $194.1 billion and $34.6 billion. Its total is $593.2 billion.
SpaceX’s third-quarter 10-Q lists $37.8 billion of non-cancelable contractual commitments, which the filing says relate primarily to its investments in SI infrastructure and third-party cloud capacity arrangements, up from $28.0 billion in June. Meta, Nvidia, Oracle and Broadcom have not filed since our 22 October count, so their lines are unchanged.
A Different Count Says $4.1 Trillion
ZeroHedge wrote on X on 30 October: “Ding Ding Ding: $4.1 trillion, up $1 trillion in 90 days”. Its earlier post put “Total Hyperscaler off balance sheet debt as of Oct 21” at $3.6 trillion. ZeroHedge does not give its method or company list in the posts, so its total and ours are not directly comparable; ours is about $0.16 trillion lower.
Our count reads the same line items as the 22 October tracker, undiscounted, from each company’s latest 10-Q or 10-K. Reporting dates differ, from 26 July for Nvidia to 30 September for five companies. Not all of these commitments are for AI.
By category, purchase commitments are $2,254.5 billion, leases not yet commenced $1,354.8 billion and guarantees, investment, contingent and other lines $335.1 billion, by our arithmetic. Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon account for $2,957.0 billion, about 75% of the total.
These amounts sit outside the balance sheet until the leases start or the goods arrive. Alphabet says the significant majority of its multi-year commitments will be fulfilled through 2031, and its leases not yet commenced start between 2026 and 2031.
The Structural Read
As we read the filings, Alphabet and Amazon account for $340.4 billion of the $385.8 billion increase, by our arithmetic: Alphabet’s multi-year commitments rose $95.1 billion from June and Amazon’s purchase lines $124.3 billion.
As we read the leases, leases signed but not yet started grew at all three cloud providers that filed: Alphabet to $130.5 billion, Microsoft to $364.6 billion and Amazon to $164.9 billion.
As we read our own method, the totals mix reporting dates from 26 July to 30 September; guarantee and backstop lines are maximum potential payments, while some purchase lines are stated at minimum pricing, so the total describes what the filings list, not a forecast of spending.
Alphabet, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026
“The significant majority of these commitments will be fulfilled through 2031”
Three Implications
FOR ALPHABET Its 10-Q lists $924.4 billion of material purchase commitments, of which $213.4 billion is due within 12 months.
FOR AMAZON Its commitments table shows leases not yet commenced of $164.9 billion at 30 September, against $137.2 billion at 30 June.
FOR READERS OF OTHER TALLIES ZeroHedge puts its own count at $4.1 trillion; it does not give its method in the posts, so the totals are not directly comparable.
The framework describes its subject as “How the money flows, where it cracks, what it buys, who can absorb it, and what happens when revenue can’t catch up.”
As we read it, these off-balance-sheet lines are the part of that flow already signed but not yet on the books. The framework is the owner’s argument and does not discuss these filings.
The filings do not say how much of these commitments is for AI, and companies define their lines differently, so the categories are our grouping. Guarantee and backstop amounts are maximum potential payments, not expected payments. Microsoft’s purchase and construction lines date from 30 June. We have not seen ZeroHedge’s full method.
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On the latest filings, the eight companies in our tracker list about $3.94 trillion of commitments not on their balance sheets, up $385.8 billion from 22 October, by our arithmetic. Alphabet leads at $1.06 trillion, ahead of Meta at $866.5 billion, Microsoft at $593.2 billion and Amazon at $438.3 billion.
A note on sourcing. Company figures come from the Form 10-Q and 10-K filings on SEC EDGAR listed below, read on 31 October 2026, and from our AI Compute Commitments Tracker (22 October 2026). The $4.1 trillion figure is ZeroHedge’s, from its posts on X. Totals, changes and shares are our arithmetic. We did not contact the companies.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
