How tech’s biggest companies are offloading risks of the Al boom

They are making deals to secure data centre financing and computing power without adding debt

- Karen Weise and Eli Tan

Meta is investing billions of dollars in new data centres like this one, pictured under construction in Eagle Mountain, Utah, in November 2024. Tech companies are adding computing power quickly and waiting to see how demand for AI shapes up before committing to projects that can last for decades.

(PHOTO: CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYTIMES)

This autumn, Microsoft announced a series of deals, totalling tens of billions of dollars, to lease computer power for its artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions. Meta secured almost US$30 billion (S$38.7 billion) in financing to build a massive data centre in Louisiana without taking on the debt itself. Google also committed to renting computing power from a small company and then selling some of it to OpenAI.

Those deals had one thing in common: They allowed companies that make massive quarterly profits to reduce their financial exposure to the frenetic, global buildup of data centres.

They also signalled new ways the biggest companies in tech are manoeuvring to push some of the risk of the AI boom onto the shoulders of upstarts eager for a piece of the action.

The moves let companies like Meta and Microsoft add computing power quickly and then wait to see how demand for AI shapes up before committing to projects that can last for decades.

Trillions of dollars are at stake as tech companies try to predict how much computing power AI will demand years down the line. If the big companies decide they do not really need all that computing after the deals are over, the smaller companies and their lenders will be stuck with the consequences.