Trillions of dollars in AI spending not in the balance sheet yet

For the Wall Street Journal, Peter Rudegeair and Peter Santilli report on the trillions (with a t) of dollars slated for later spending by big tech:

Nine top tech companies had some $3 trillion of off-balance-sheet commitments mostly related to AI, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of footnotes in their most recent securities filings. Those obligations are growing faster than traditional “capex,” which totaled about $600 billion over the past year they reported, and were about triple what the companies owe under their outstanding leases and long-term borrowings.

That is a lot of money.

Mostly, the triangle Voronoi treemap caught my eye. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those. I wish they had shown all $3 trillion of commitments to match the headline instead of just the four companies. The math threw me off for a second.