Big Tech’s $300B AI guarantees raise hidden risk for investors

[balance sheet] Maksim Shchur/iStock via Getty Images Technology companies have provided as much as $300 billion in guarantees to finance artificial intelligence data centers and chips during the past year, helping support the construction boom without immediately recording most of the exposure as debt, the Financial Times reported Sunday. Meta (META [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/META]) pioneered the use of so-called residual value guarantees for a major data center project last year. Broadcom (AVGO [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/AVGO]) has since used them to support chip sales connected to Anthropic (ANTHRO [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/ANTHRO]), while Nvidia (NVDA [https://seekingalpha.