OpenAI’s push to build massive global AI infrastructure, including its planned Stargate data centers, is going to require tens of billions in financing. The twist is that very little of that debt will ever appear on OpenAI’s own balance sheet. A new report from the Financial Times says the company has effectively pushed at least $100 billion of borrowing onto its partners, along with all the risks that come with it.
Partners like Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 1.47% ) , SoftBank $SFTBY ( ▲ 1.91% ) , CoreWeave $CRWV ( ▼ 1.58% ) , Crusoe, and Blue Owl Capital are taking on huge amounts of debt through bonds, loans, and credit lines to meet their promises to OpenAI for compute and infrastructure. For publicly traded names in that group, the setup hasn’t exactly been a blessing. OpenAI’s heavy cash burn and the rise of Gemini 3 have weighed on sentiment, creating guilt by association across several of its allies.
Oracle has been hit the hardest, with its aggressive spending plans tied to OpenAI helping trigger a stock sell-off and widening credit default swap spreads. CoreWeave and other partners have seen similar stress as investors reassess what backing OpenAI actually means for their balance sheets going forward.
A senior OpenAI executive summed up the entire approach in one line to the FT: “That’s been kind of the strategy. How does OpenAI leverage other people’s balance sheets?”