Meta’s Promises to Pay Reach $810 Billion

MENLO PARK, Calif., Oct. 23 — Meta’sMeta’s balance sheet at Sept. 30 showed $206.45 billion of liabilities. Two larger sums sit in the notes to it. Meta’s leases signed but not yet begun and its non-cancelable contractual commitments came to $810.25 billion at Sept. 30, by this paper’s sum, up from $139.33 billion a year earlier.

Neither sum is debt, but in the third quarter alone the two grew by $181.95 billion, about five times the quarter’s capital spending of $34.91 billion. The figures are in the quarterly report Meta filed on Thursday.

That matters on both sides of the contracts. For the companies that sell Meta cloud capacity, servers, energy and data-center space, they are years of payments from one customer. For Meta’s shareholders and lenders, they are spending fixed in advance, whatever its AI earns. And Meta’s report now says it expects to seek more capital, the day after it announced a class of stock without votes that it can sell.

What Meta Signed

The leases come “in addition to the lease liabilities” on Meta’s balance sheet, the report says. They consist of “data centers, energy-related infrastructure, colocations, and certain network infrastructure,” and they begin “during the remainder of 2026 through 2036 with lease terms ranging from greater than one year to 30 years.” A year earlier the leases were “mostly for data centers, colocations, and certain network infrastructure,” and were to begin by 2030.CommencementA lease of more than 12 months goes on Meta’s balance sheet, as an asset and a liability, on the date it commences, at the present value of its fixed payments, Meta’s annual report says. Its operating lease liabilities came to $31.17 billion at Sept. 30, by this paper’s sum of the current and non-current lines.

The leases not yet begun rose every quarter, from $58.14 billion at Sept. 30, 2025, to $103.77 billion at the end of the year, $182.88 billion at March 31, $278.99 billion at June 30 and $355.73 billion at Sept. 30. The commitments went from $81.19 billion to $131.05 billion, $237.67 billion, $349.31 billion and $454.52 billion. In July Meta entered into data-center leases with obligations of about $68 billion, to begin in 2027 and 2028 and run 18 to 20 years, its second-quarter report said.

The commitments “mostly relate to third-party cloud capacity arrangements and investments in servers and network infrastructure, energy service agreements for data centers, and consumer hardware products in Reality Labs,” the report says. They are not a second bill on top of Meta’s spending: server and network purchases feed into its capital spending, and cloud services into its costs and expenses. The comparison with a quarter’s capital spending shows how fast the promises are growing.The Contingent CloudMeta also has “contingent obligations to purchase up to $14.72 billion of cloud capacity over a five-year period, which may be reduced if the cloud service provider is able to sell such capacity to other customers.” It does not name the provider. It was not in Meta’s annual report; it has appeared, at the same figure, in each quarterly report since.

The bills are coming sooner. Of the $454.52 billion, about $45.85 billion is due in 2026 and $121.41 billion in 2027, the report says. At Dec. 31, Meta’s annual report scheduled $22.17 billion of its commitments for 2027; by Sept. 30 the figure was $121.41 billion, nearly five and a half times as much. The $45.85 billion due in 2026, with three months of the year left, compares with $30.63 billion scheduled for all of 2026 at Dec. 31.

The Other Side

Meta’s report describes its counterparties only by kind, and gives detail on just two: ventures building data-center campuses, in Louisiana, formed in October 2025, and in Texas, formed in July. Meta holds 20 percent of each, and the parties have committed to fund their shares of about $27 billion and $14 billion of estimated development costs. Meta’s leases from the ventures begin in 2029 and 2028.

In those two ventures, Meta’s leases run four years at first, with renewals for up to 20 years in all, and Meta has guaranteed the campuses’ value, up to $41.49 billion, should it leave. If it ends or does not renew a lease and certain other conditions are met, it owes the shortfall between the property’s value and a set threshold. Meta puts its maximum exposure to loss in the ventures at $68.40 billion, and has recorded no liability for the guarantees because, it says, payments are not probable. The bargain, then: the partners, with 80 percent, put up most of the money for buildings Meta can leave after four years, and they hold Meta’s guarantee if it does.

Some purchase agreements require cash set aside. Under escrow requirements in “certain multi-year infrastructure purchase agreements,” Meta has restricted $10.80 billion of money-market funds from general use, to be released between 2028 and 2030 as it meets the purchase obligations.

The dependence runs both ways. “Any financial or other difficulties these providers face may adversely affect our business, and we exercise little control over these providers,” the report says of the third parties that supply much of Meta’s technical infrastructure. On a follow-up call with analysts on Oct. 21, Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, said Meta was “trying to procure land and prepare large scale sites” so that it could add capacity quickly in later years while “limiting how much we have to commit.”

The Market’s Read

Meta’s report now says that “from time to time we expect to seek to raise additional capital,” where its July report said it “may also seek” to, and it adds a sentence not in its four previous reports: “a downgrade of our credit rating could adversely affect our access to liquidity and capital and could increase our borrowing costs.” Meta still says it anticipates that its available funds and cash flow “from operations and financing activities” will be enough to fund its cash commitments “over the next 12 months and thereafter for the foreseeable future.” That sentence counts on financing as well as on the business.

Meta held $82.45 billion of cash and marketable securities at Sept. 30, against $84.00 billion of notes outstanding. “We don’t have any specific financing plans to announce at this time,” Ms. Li said on the earnings call. On the follow-up call she said that “we believe our strong balance sheet is going to be a source of strength for us, I think, in a more uncertain environment as the market shakes out in terms of how this all gets funded.”

The credit market moved little on Friday. Meta’s five-year credit default swaps traded 0.3 percent narrower, according to LSEG data, Reuters reported; swap premiums had risen on Thursday “after Meta’s decision to sell more stock,” the agency said.The SwapsCredit default swaps let investors bet on a default, typically over five or 10 years, though the contracts often change hands to hedge positions or bet on near-term moves, Reuters notes. Meta’s shares closed Friday at $642.62, down 0.96 percent on the day and 9.40 percent on the week.METANasdaq614.99▼9.53−1.5%Meta Platforms · Friday’s session

Meta is not alone: at June 30, Microsoft reported $329.1 billion of leases, primarily for data centers, that had not yet commenced, more than Meta’s $278.99 billion that day, and Amazon reported $137.21 billion and Alphabet $85.2 billion.On the Same LineMicrosoft’s figure is from its annual report for the year to June 30 and includes “some arrangements subject to certain contractual conditions being met.” Alphabet’s and Amazon’s are from their second-quarter reports; Alphabet separately disclosed a short-term lease, signed in June, with a non-cancelable commitment of about $5.8 billion, outside its $85.2 billion. Only the leases are compared here. Microsoft and Alphabet report their quarters on Oct. 28 and Amazon on Oct. 29; their filings are where to read the same line at Sept. 30.

Meta usually gives its forecast for the next year on its fourth-quarter call, Ms. Li told analysts. By Sept. 30, Meta had already signed $121.41 billion of commitments due in 2027.