> is they are trying to hide the debt.

They aren't hiding it though. The contracts are recorded in regular filings.

Rope a doped with cope. Maybe you should buy some $ORCL?

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/five-us-tech-gia...

"Companies disclose such future debt not in their balance sheets, but in annotations to their quarterly financial statements. This is a legitimate practice under accounting rules, but may make it difficult for retail investors to recognize risks."

"Today's AI industry is partly supported by demand generated by circular investment. Nvidia and tech giants invest in data center operators and AI companies, with that money then turning into GPU and cloud usage fees. Actual demand is difficult to see, increasing the likelihood of over investment in data centers."

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ch4s3 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Retail investors shouldn’t be investing in individual stocks outside of industries they understand well. Following GAAP is the definition of not hiding the obligations.

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chairmansteve 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Maybe GAAP should be changed? Professional investors have the time to comb through the small print. These off balance sheet activities seem designed to bamboozle the small investor.

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turtlesdown11 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Enron also didn't violate GAAP so by your definition, no financial wrongdoings...

	▲	linkregister an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The essence of the Enron scandal was the perpetration of accounting fraud. It took down Arthur Andersen. We went from the "Big 5" accounting firms to the "Big 4" because of this. They very much violated GAAP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

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jxjfjkfmc 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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nater5000 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>but may make it difficult for retail investors to recognize risks

Ok, so just to be clear: institutional investors are (a) the ones investing the large proportion of capital in these companies and (b) are well equipped to decipher financial statements. The idea that any significant amount of retail investors have even seen a financial statement, let alone is making decisions based on their analysis of a financial statement, is laughable. And, even then, if someone is putting in that effort, then presumably they're not going to get tripped up by a legitimate practice that they ought to specifically be looking for given the context.

And all of that doesn't even take into account that every article discussing the financials of AI firms over the last half a decade have been pointing out these dynamics. We're literally in a thread discussing this exact dynamic. Retail investors are certainly far more likely to make investing decisions based on these kinds of articles and threads than they are based solely on independent financial statement analysis that they're conducting. At a minimum, I think anybody taking any of this seriously has gotten the hint by now.

If it comes out that these firms are committing straight-up fraud, then there will be a lot more to discuss. But, as of now, the sentiment is that these firms are behaving perfectly legitimately, just abnormally and maybe irresponsibly compared to their historical context. If an investor isn't equipped to handle this kind of analysis under these circumstances, then I'm not going to feel too bad if they lose their money "investing" when they're really just gambling.