Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49020999

"It's not debt, it's what they owe, and it's not hidden, if you dig you can find it."

If there’s anyone I can trust to give an accurate and unbiased assessment of AI company finances, it’s surely an outfit selling a “finance CLI for your trading agent”

3-9% of revenue spread between 10 and 30 years

> But it is not debt. It combines $821 billion of leases that have not started with $829 billion of purchase and construction commitments. These payments are spread over one to 30 years.

I can't help but have my "weasel words" alarm go off. Perhaps the original article was also misleading, but I find it strange that they call out 1 to 30 years when we all know there's no way most of those commitments are spread over thirty years. I couldn't find anywhere in the article where they show any sort of graph to show commitments one year out, two years out, etc. because it seems that would answer the question better.

They show the commitments vs revenue but I kind of find that misleading because it (sort of) assumes there's no more commitments coming, and there are certainly new commitments coming. So knowing what their revenue is versus when those commitments come due seems like the most useful piece of information which isn't teased out.

I'm not saying the original article or this rebuttal is wrong or right. I just found this confusing and it feels like it would have cleared up things to explain this better.

>But it is not debt. It combines $821 billion of leases that have not started with $829 billion of purchase and construction commitments. These payments are spread over one to 30 years.

i am not a finance guy, but is this kind of like arguing "it's not debt, its a financial liability" (while pushing their glasses up their nose, and starting with an 'actually')? is this just a semantic distinction without a material difference?

i feel like i need jumpcrisscross or someone financially savvy to translate. my gut says the ai tech company's words on big ai tech debt should be handled with several grains of salt.

(i am typically hesitant to say so, but this article gives me strong vibes of a response to a "is the hidden 1.65T debt news real?" prompt)

This is a load of horse shit. You can't run a debt over 30 years for short lifespan infrastructure, staffing, energy usage and interest. You have to spend again 3 years down the line. It's a fucking snowball. There isn't enough revenue to cover the expenditure, ever.

It's like Musk's Twitter accounting but with more crack sprinkled on it.

Why is this flagged? It doesn't seem to violate guidelines