Alphabet and Meta disclose up to $133.4 billion of contingent support for the companies that build and power their data centers, by our arithmetic from their 10-Q filings for the quarter to 30 September 2026. The latest 10-Qs of Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle disclose no comparable arrangement in a full-text search.
Alphabet’s $91.9 billion of data center backstops and power-equipment guarantees equals about 73% of its long-term debt, and Meta’s $41.5 billion of residual value guarantees about 51% of its own, by our arithmetic.
Short explainer · Google and Meta Back Data Center Partners
A vertical news Short summarising this story. Figures come from the companies’ 10-Q filings; our arithmetic is labelled.
Business Pill · FINANCIAL CONDITIONS
A short explainer on financial conditions, the cost and availability of money for borrowers. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about these companies or their guarantees.
The key insight: As we read the filings, Alphabet and Meta stand behind the companies that build and power their data centers with up to $133.4 billion of contingent support, by our arithmetic, while the latest 10-Qs of Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle disclose large leases but no comparable guarantees.
We read the latest quarterly filing of each company and searched the full text for “residual value”, “backstop”, “guarantee” and “variable interest”. The amounts below are maximum exposures the companies disclose, not losses they expect.
Alphabet’s 10-Q lists “$75.7 billion of financial support in the form of backstop obligations relating to data centers, including data center lease payments and the associated energy costs for certain agreements”. Of that, $48.0 billion is executed with third-party data center providers and accounted for as credit derivatives, and $27.7 billion is an obligation to put backstops in place in future, $10.0 billion of it with Crux AI, a related party.
Alphabet also discloses guarantees with maximum potential future payments of $16.2 billion “to support counterparty procurement of long-lead time equipment for our future power purchase and energy agreements”. Together with the backstops that is $91.9 billion, by our arithmetic. We leave out a separate $6.6 billion guarantee to repurchase TPU hardware sold to customers, which is not support for data center or power partners.
Meta’s 10-Q puts its maximum residual value guarantees to its two data center ventures, in Louisiana and Texas, at $41,493 million, up from $28,091 million at the end of 2025, a rise of about 48% by our arithmetic. We covered that disclosure on 31 October.
Maximum contingent support for data center and power partners disclosed in each company’s latest 10-Q. Alphabet: $48.0 billion of executed backstops, $27.7 billion of backstops to put in place and $16.2 billion of power-equipment guarantees; Meta: $41.5 billion of residual value guarantees. Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle: none found in a full-text search. Shares of long-term debt are our arithmetic.
What Would Trigger a Payment
The two companies support partners in different ways. Alphabet says the notional amounts of its credit backstops “represent the maximum potential exposure regarding future payments in the event of specified default scenarios by underlying parties”. It says the agreements run for up to 15 years and that on a default it keeps “the right to assume the underlying leases for internal use or to sublease to third parties”.
Meta’s guarantees are tied to its own decisions on its leases. Its filing says: “If we decide to terminate or not renew a lease, and if certain other conditions are met, our maximum RVG payment would equal any shortfall between the fair value at that time and the RVG threshold for that property”. Meta adds that “RVG payments are not probable, and therefore no liability has been recorded to date”.
Alphabet’s credit-derivative notional rose to $48,012 million at 30 September from $16,940 million at the end of 2025, about 2.8 times, by our arithmetic. Our 28 October piece tracked the earlier step, to $43.8 billion at 30 June.
The Three That Lease Without Disclosed Guarantees
All five companies have signed large leases that have not started; the four that describe them name data centers among the uses. Microsoft reports $364.6 billion of leases “primarily for datacenters” that had not yet commenced, Oracle reports $288 billion of additional lease commitments “substantially all related to data center arrangements”, and Amazon lists $164,922 million of leases not yet commenced. Meta reports about $355.73 billion and Alphabet $130.5 billion.
In those three filings our search found no residual value guarantee, data center backstop or guarantee to a power partner. Microsoft’s 10-Q contains no use of “guarantee”. In Amazon’s, the word appears in its A-to-z Guarantee for shoppers and in standby letters of credit that banks issue on its behalf, and “backstopping” refers to its credit facilities supporting its own commercial paper. Oracle’s 10-Q contains none of the four terms.
The leases are the larger number. By our arithmetic, signed-but-not-started leases across the five come to about $1.30 trillion, the kind of line our off-book commitments tracker adds up across eight companies.
The Business Lever: Who Carries the Building Risk
As we read the filings, a lease commits a tenant to pay rent, while a backstop or residual value guarantee also puts part of the landlord’s or developer’s risk on the tenant’s books as a contingent exposure. Alphabet and Meta take on that second layer; the other three filings disclose only the first.
As we read it, that matters for lenders to data center builders: support from a company with Alphabet’s or Meta’s credit standing can make a project easier to finance. Alphabet’s own risk factors name “backstops and financial guarantees to support the build-out of third-party data centers and power infrastructure” among the commitments that could increase its liabilities. The revenue those data centers serve shows up in the $1.83 trillion cloud backlog at Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
The Structural Read
As we read the scale, Alphabet’s $91.9 billion of backstops and power-equipment guarantees equals about 73% of its long-term debt, by our arithmetic.
As we read the mechanics, the two differ: Alphabet’s backstops pay on a partner’s default, while Meta’s residual value guarantees pay only if Meta ends a lease and the campus is worth less than its threshold.
As we read the trend, Alphabet’s executed backstops rose about 2.8 times in nine months and Meta’s guarantees about 48%, by our arithmetic.
Meta, Form 10-Q, Note 5
“RVG payments are not probable, and therefore no liability has been recorded to date”
Three Implications
FOR DATA CENTER DEVELOPERS Alphabet’s 10-Q says $48.0 billion of its backstops is executed with third-party data center providers.
FOR META’S PARTNERS Meta’s filing says a guarantee payment would equal any shortfall between fair value and the RVG threshold if Meta ends or does not renew a lease.
FOR READING THE OTHER THREEMicrosoft, Amazon and Oracle report $364.6 billion, $164.9 billion and $288 billion of leases not yet commenced; our search found no comparable guarantee in their 10-Qs.
The framework says “It is a sovereign-scale financing problem dressed in tech-company clothing โ and the financial architecture is starting to invert.”
As we read it, backstops and residual value guarantees are part of that architecture: two of the five filings put contingent support for partners beside their leases. The framework predates these 10-Qs and does not discuss the arrangements.
The figures are ceilings. Neither company estimates how likely payments are beyond Meta’s statement that RVG payments are not probable and Alphabet’s statement that the fair value of its power-equipment guarantees was not material. A search that finds no such terms in a 10-Q does not prove a company has no comparable arrangement elsewhere, for example inside lease terms it does not break out. Oracle’s latest 10-Q covers the quarter to 31 August 2026.
This Week In The AI Supercycle
Anthropic’s Reality Check, The Capital Squeeze, & The New World Order
This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a growthstory. This week it started being priced as a credit story.
Alphabet and Meta disclose up to $133.4 billion of contingent support for data center and power partners, about $91.9 billion and $41.5 billion respectively, by our arithmetic, while the latest 10-Qs of Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle show leases but no comparable guarantees.
A note on sourcing. Every figure comes from the companies’ 10-Q filings with the SEC. The $133.4 billion, $91.9 billion, 73%, 51%, 48%, 2.8 times and $1.30 trillion are our arithmetic. Findings of no disclosure rest on a full-text keyword search of each filing. This is not investment advice.
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.
