Oracle, Meta, xAI, CoreWeave Move $120B of AI Debt Off Books Using Wall Street SPVs

Silicon Valley's biggest AI players just pulled a classic Wall Street vanishing act. Oracle, Meta, xAI, and CoreWeave have collectively shifted a staggering $120 billion in AI-related debt off their balance sheets. They're not hiding it—they're just moving it. The tool? Special Purpose Vehicles, Wall Street's favorite accounting escape hatch.

How the SPV Shell Game Works

Think of an SPV as a financial sidecar. A company parks its expensive, risky debt—like the billions needed to build AI data centers—into a separate, legally distinct entity. The parent company's main balance sheet stays clean, debt ratios look healthier, and credit rating agencies might just nod approvingly. It's a time-tested trick for making colossal spending sprees disappear from the quarterly reports investors actually read.

The $120 Billion Question

Why now? The AI arms race demands unprecedented capital—we're talking tens of billions for GPU clusters, data center construction, and energy infrastructure. That kind of spending terrifies shareholders and can tank a stock price. By moving $120 billion into SPVs, these tech titans get to keep spending like there's no tomorrow without spooking the market today. It's growth without the visible hangover.

A Cynical Nod to Finance

Let's be real—this is financial engineering at its most elegant, proving once again that in high finance, if the debt doesn't show up on the main ledger, did it ever really happen? The move keeps the AI investment engine roaring, even if it adds a new layer of opacity for anyone trying to gauge the true financial health of these behemoths. The gamble is that the AI payoff will arrive long before the complex structure of these off-book vehicles ever becomes a problem.

Private capital absorbs massive AI data center borrowing

Silicon Valley companies once relied on cash and low debt, but that changed as the race for AI computing power intensified and building data centers now requires tens of billions of dollars at a time.

Meta set the pace in October with a $30 billion private credit deal for its planned Hyperion data center in Louisiana, putting the project inside an SPV called Beignet Investor, created with Blue Owl Capital.

The investment vehicle raised about $27 billion in loans from Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo, and other investors, alongside $3 billion in equity from Blue Owl. None of the debt appeared on Meta’s balance sheet, and that allowed the company raise another $30 billion in corporate bonds in November.

Meanwhile, Oracle leases compute to OpenAI, so it has partnered with builders and financiers such as Crusoe, Vantage, Related Digital, and Blue Owl to develop multiple data centers, each owned by separate SPVs.

One vehicle backing the Abilene, Texas facility received about $13 billion from Blue Owl and JPMorgan, including $10 billion in debt. Other arrangements include a $38 billion debt package for sites in Texas and Wisconsin and an $18 billion loan for a New Mexico location.

In every case, Oracle leases the facilities while lenders hold claims on the assets.

Risk spreads across Wall Street as SPVs multiply

Investors often believe the real risk is still with the tech company leasing the site, as exemplified by Meta’s Beignet Investor deal. Meta owns 20% of the SPV and provided a residual value guarantee, meaning it WOULD repay investors if the data center value drops below a set level at lease end and Meta does not renew.

Elon Musk’s xAI is pursuing a similar approach. The startup is raising $20 billion, including as much as $12.5 billion in debt. An SPV will use the funds to buy Nvidia graphics processing units and lease them back to xAI.

CoreWeave has followed the same path. In March, the company created an SPV to meet an $11.9 billion contract to supply computing power to OpenAI. In July, it borrowed $2.6 billion to finance those obligations.

Private capital interest remains strong. UBS said tech companies had borrowed about $450 billion from private funds by early 2025, up $100 billion from the prior year. Around $125 billion flowed into project finance deals this year alone.

Data center construction now depends heavily on the $1.7 trillion private credit market, where concerns around valuation, illiquidity, and borrower concentration are growing.

But the risk is getting bigger as more companies adopt the same structures, because OpenAI alone has committed more than $1.4 trillion in long-term computing contracts across the industry.

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have avoided SPVs so far, funding data centers with cash and traditional bonds.

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