Digital Realty’s $7.8B Second Balance Sheet

A 2026 review covering nine large technology companies put AI-related off-balance-sheet commitments at roughly $3 trillion, against about $600 billion of reported capital spending—a five-to-one gap. Against that gap, Digital Realty and Blackstone appeared at two stages of the same market: a $7 billion development venture in 2023 and Digital Realty’s separate $7.8 billion purchase of a majority stake in three fully leased Virginia data centers in 2026. The spending record and the property deals describe the same buildout from opposite sides.

The $3 trillion figure is a research estimate, not a standardized accounting subtotal. It combines disclosed, multi-year obligations—including project-company debt, leases and future infrastructure commitments—while the $600 billion denominator uses reported capex for the nine companies. The ratio measures the contractual scale surrounding their AI plans; it does not establish when each payment falls due or imply $2.4 trillion of hidden spending.

Developers, landlords, private-credit providers, utilities, equipment suppliers and tenants use leases, joint ventures, guarantees and special-purpose vehicles to divide ownership and downside across the AI infrastructure buildout. Together, those contracts form a second balance sheet around each campus. Digital Realty earns its place by assembling energized land, permits, construction, equipment delivery and a creditworthy tenant commitment into capacity that investors will finance.

Capex no longer contains the whole wager

The 2026 review counted $66 billion of Oracle AI-data-center construction debt in special-purpose vehicles, alongside $30 billion for Meta, $20 billion for xAI and $2.6 billion for CoreWeave. It separately included roughly $700 billion of Meta commitments related to data centers, cloud computing and associated spending.

Those categories are not interchangeable and should not be treated as debt due today. An SPV assigns claims to project assets, a lease sets a tenant’s payment schedule, and a guarantee identifies who answers if the project company cannot. Sponsors can separate construction debt from their conventional debt totals, but the contracts still determine who absorbs a late facility, an insolvent tenant or capacity that arrives after demand changes.

A fully leased building changes what capital is buying

Two Digital Realty transactions, three years apart, frame that operating model:

• 2023: Digital Realty and Blackstone committed $7 billion to develop 10 data centers across four campuses in Frankfurt, Paris and Northern Virginia.
• 2026: Digital Realty announced a $7.8 billion majority-stake purchase involving three fully leased Northern Virginia data centers held by Blackstone-managed funds.

Neither announcement says the 2026 properties belonged to the 2023 venture. The deals still expose both ends of the model. Joint-venture capital can fund construction before a campus produces rent; signed leases replace an uncertain demand forecast with contracted cash flow; and an operator can increase its ownership after tenants have committed.

Digital Realty reduces uncertainty one step at a time. Land receives permits, grid access becomes contracted power, contractors equip the shell, and tenant interest becomes a lease. Blackstone can finance one stage and sell exposure at another because each completed step changes what the next investor must underwrite.

A fully leased AI facility still binds racks, networking, cooling, power density, backup systems and equipment schedules into one site. A missed electrical milestone can delay the tenant’s chips, while delayed equipment can strand reserved power. A tenant guarantee supports financing only if Digital Realty delivers the facility specified in the lease.

Lenders price tenant credit alongside technology

Refinitiv data cited by The New York Times in December 2025 showed that AI infrastructure companies borrowed more than $100 billion that year. The newspaper reported that smaller companies with unproven AI businesses faced higher interest rates as debt investors questioned their demand and credit quality.

By June 17, 2026, Dealogic data cited by the Financial Times showed investors had put $58 billion into 42 data-center deals during the year. Oxford Economics estimated that nearly 850 data centers worth roughly $7 trillion were under construction worldwide. Those totals establish the scale of financing and construction, but they do not reveal the quality of individual tenants or loan protections.

For a data-center lender, the relevant questions include rent coverage, construction milestones, equipment value, available power, tenant concentration, guarantees and remedies after default. A lender may rely on a tenant guarantee while the tenant relies on the landlord, the landlord relies on the utility, and every party relies on deadlines that contracts cannot physically enforce.

A proven tenant can reduce financing uncertainty. An unproven tenant gives private-credit lenders reason to demand higher interest, stronger collateral or an outside guarantee before contractors pour concrete.

Long contracts outlive the hardware they finance

Anthropic’s disclosed contract stack included more than 12 initial agreements for direct data-center leases, with Google potentially providing a financial guarantee. Separately, Anthropic agreed to pay Nscale $45 billion over six years for roughly 460 megawatts of West Virginia capacity using Nvidia Vera Rubin chips. The disclosed record does not say that Google’s possible guarantee covers the Nscale agreement.

CoreWeave reported a $104 billion revenue backlog and 1.5 gigawatts of contracted power capacity. Neither measure is cash in hand, but lenders can compare the contracted revenue and power with debt service, construction requirements and delivery dates.

In 2025, Meta signed a 20-year agreement to buy power from Constellation Energy’s Illinois nuclear plant beginning in mid-2027, when a 10-year state subsidy expires. Meta gives the plant a long-duration buyer, while the plant gives Meta a defined power source for future infrastructure.

Anthropic’s six-year, hardware-linked obligation ties payments to a particular power quantity, location and chip generation. Meta’s 20-year power agreement extends across many potential generations of accelerators. In both cases, creditors and developers can finance against commitments that may survive the hardware and demand forecasts that first justified them.

A permit can still veto the capital stack

On January 26, 2026, the Financial Times reported that local governments and residents had blocked more than 24 US data-center projects during that month alone. Digital Realty, QTS and NTT Data told the newspaper that the industry had done a poor job of answering local opposition.

By June, a study reported by NBC News counted at least 75 US projects blocked or delayed during the first quarter, representing roughly $130 billion of proposed development. The study counted 833 opposition groups across 49 states. The $130 billion is proposed project value, not a realized loss, but the delays show how quickly local decisions can reach financed construction schedules.

Local governments issue permits, utilities energize substations, and suppliers deliver transformers, cooling systems and accelerators. When one of them misses a deadline, the delay can trigger lease remedies, financing conditions and equipment rescheduling across the campus.

Digital Realty and Equinix stocked diesel in 2022 ahead of possible winter blackouts in Europe because their generators still depended on fuel deliveries and grid stability. Creditors have since attached more capital and more deadlines to those same physical dependencies.

Digital Realty’s $7.8 billion purchase concerned three fully leased Virginia facilities whose contracts made future rent legible to capital. Their lender covenants, diesel tanks, power lines and county permits still carry the same address. That campus is the second balance sheet.