Datacentre capex
The capital spent building datacentres before the revenue arrives.
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Facts
- Lane
- Capital and talent
- Wave
- 1 of 12 (build order, not a date)
- Needs
- 0 boxes all the way back through hard links
- Unlocks
- 112 boxes downstream through hard links
- Leverage
- None: already built
- Cluster
- Around datacentre capex
Evidence as of October 2026
Moody’s expects US hyperscaler capex above $700bn in 2026, about six times 2022, and says hyperscalers see underinvestment as the bigger risk.
Detail boxes 4
Datacentres paid for through joint ventures and special-purpose debt, so the debt sits off the hyperscaler’s balance sheet.
Meta’s Hyperion uses $27.3bn of SPV debt in a joint venture 80% owned by Blue Owl. Hyperscalers and chipmakers hold more than $3tn of commitments off balance sheet.
Chipmakers lending to, guaranteeing or investing in the customers that buy their chips.
Nvidia’s financing platform aims to mobilise more than $500bn. A reported, unconfirmed $250bn guarantee for OpenAI coincided with Nvidia’s largest-ever rise in credit default swap prices.
The chance that debt-funded datacentres and neoclouds cannot refinance.
CoreWeave’s 2030 bond yields neared 16% after the 16 October 2026 selloff.
Third-party credit secured on the chips themselves and their rental contracts, from private loans to rated asset-backed bonds.
In Oct 2026 Stonebriar marketed about $869M of AAA-to-BBB- equipment ABS with GPU loans about 15% of the collateral, and banks were providing a $22B chip-backed loan to Crux AI (Bloomberg, 7 Oct 2026).