Meta Platforms has accumulated roughly $420 billion in off-balance-sheet obligations tied to AI infrastructure, a figure more than seven times its reported long-term debt of $58.7 billion, according to a Nikkei Asia investigation. Together with Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle, the five tech giants carry approximately $1.65 trillion in future lease and purchase commitments disclosed only in SEC footnotes. The obligations are legal under U.S. accounting rules because they represent contractual commitments rather than traditional borrowings. Meta's $50 billion Hyperion data center in Louisiana, financed largely through a joint venture with Blue Owl Capital, exemplifies the trend of using project financing to keep debt off the balance sheet. With Meta reporting earnings on July 29, investors are watching whether CEO Mark Zuckerberg will announce a cloud computing business that could justify the enormous spending. Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney suggests Meta may challenge neocloud providers rather than the Big Three hyperscalers. The core risk: if AI demand disappoints, today's hidden commitments become tomorrow's impairment charges.