Tech’s biggest companies offloading risks of AI boom

This fall, Microsoft announced a series of deals, totalling tens of billions, to lease computer power for its artificial intelligence ambitions.

- KAREN WEISE & ELI TAN

Meta secured almost $30 billion in financing to build a massive data centre in Louisiana without taking on the debt itself. Google also committed to rent computing power from a small company and then sell some of it to OpenAL.

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 centers.

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 Al 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 dont really need all that computing after the deals are over, the smaller companies and their lenders will be stuck with the consequences.