Big Tech Isn't Hiding $1.65T of Debt
The viral claim that Big Tech is hiding $1.65 trillion of debt is misleading.
We reviewed public SEC filings for Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle and calculated about $430.0 billion of debt, not $1.65 trillion.
The borrowings were not hidden. We found each figure directly in the companies’ balance sheets and debt notes.
We also reproduced the viral article’s $1.6507 trillion total. The article gets there by combining $821.4 billion of uncommenced leases with $829.2 billion of purchase and construction commitments and labeling the sum “debt.” The disclosed payment schedules and lease terms span from one year to as long as 30 years, with some later payments lacking a final disclosed year.
Evidence: The sources and method appendix contains the filing links, calculations, definitions, and claim-by-claim support. Data was sourced from finterm Cli.
Access: We paid $18 to read the full Nikkei article rather than fact-checking a screenshot, excerpt, or social-media summary.