It could be legit, it could be a thickly veiled accounting fraud continuing the valuation inflation with fake deals that count money multiple times.

Maybe a little bit of both.

Lots and lots of vendor financing during the dotcom era, and it ended up being a material part of those vendors' own difficulties. Especially when service providers were concerned (e.g. the huge crash in optical in particular).

Obviously it's not a perfect comparison, but you have to wonder how much of NVIDIA's income (for instance) is ultimately funded by its own money.