Big Tech’s chip-backed SPVs reportedly reach $300 billion

Roughly $300 billion in chip-collateralized special purpose vehicles has now been identified or processed. That is a lot of AI hardware sitting somewhere other than a company’s balance sheet. Big Tech and AI firms have reportedly used these structures over the past year to finance data center buildouts and chip purchases. The goal is simple: get the GPUs without letting the debt crowd the financial statements investors actually read. How the $300 billion got built Think of a special purpose vehicle as a separate legal box. A company sets it up, the box borrows money and buys the chips, and the company leases the hardware or guarantees the deal from the outside. On paper, the parent stays lean. In practice, it is still very much on the hook through leases and guarantees. Private credit giants are writing the checks. Blackstone and Apollo Global Management have backed chip-backed financing arrangements, which have grown more popular as demand for AI infrastructure keeps climbing. Alphabet offers one of the starkest examples. Its data-center guarantees jumped from $16.9 billion to $43.8 billion in just six months, more than doubling in that window. Less than 2% of that amount shows up...