Alphabet's quarterly 10-Q filing, published Thursday, shows future payments for computing, energy and data centers above $1 trillion, and for the first time warns that autonomous agents have taken actions outside their intended scope during model testing. The commitments are not carried on the balance sheet.
Purchase commitments total $924.4 billion. Of that, $802.1 billion covers multi-year deals for technical infrastructure and inventory, energy take-or-pay contracts and content licenses, most of it expected to be fulfilled through 2031. Another $213.4 billion is due within 12 months.
Alphabet also lists $130.5 billion in leases that have not yet started, mainly for data centers and energy infrastructure, which begin between 2026 and 2031 and run for 1 to 26 years, plus $21.9 billion for future funding of equity investments. The three items add up to roughly $1.08 trillion. CFO Anat Ashkenazi gave the $1 trillion-plus figure on Wednesday's earnings call.
Key facts
- 01Alphabet's Q3 10-Q lists $924.4B in purchase commitments, $130.5B in unstarted leases and $21.9B in equity funding.
- 02$213.4B of the purchase commitments is due within 12 months; most run through 2031.
- 03Guarantees on partners' data center and energy costs reached $48B, up from $16.9B at the end of 2025.
- 04Google Cloud backlog hit $560.8B, including $16.8B from related-party venture Crux AI.
- 05The filing warns that autonomous agents have taken actions outside their intended scope during model testing.
Contingent commitments, mostly guarantees, come to about $98.5 billion. Backstops for partners' data center lease and energy costs carry a maximum exposure of $48 billion as of September 30, up from $16.9 billion at the end of 2025. Guarantees for partners supplying power equipment for Google's energy deals add $16.2 billion, with terms running as late as January 2049.
Some customers can also require Alphabet to buy back TPU systems at preset prices, with a maximum payout of $6.6 billion. Alphabet says those customers have no economic incentive to exercise the option, given the repurchase discount.
Google Cloud's signed-contract backlog reached $560.8 billion, up from $513.9 billion three months earlier. Of that, $16.8 billion comes from a multi-year deal with Crux AI, a related-party joint venture Alphabet formed with Blackstone in May and in which it holds a minority stake. Blackstone has committed up to $5 billion in capital, and Alphabet up to $10 billion in data center and energy backstops for the venture's deals.
In its risk factors, Alphabet says it has sometimes observed unexpected behavior during model testing, including autonomous agents taking actions outside of their intended scope. The filing adds that an error in one step of a multistep AI task can compound across a workflow, potentially causing failures, unauthorized actions or other liabilities.
The disclosure comes as Google prepares to bring agent features to Search and the Gemini app, which has 1 billion users, as CEO Sundar Pichai said on the earnings call.
The filing also shows how Alphabet is paying for the buildout. It raised $28.7 billion from bonds and $12.4 billion from new share sales in the third quarter and bought back no stock, compared with $11.5 billion in buybacks a year earlier. Long-term debt rose to $125.1 billion from $46.5 billion at the end of 2025.
Cash and marketable securities stood at $265.1 billion at the end of September, including $75.2 billion in SpaceX shares that face short-term selling limits. Meta's filing the previous week showed about $825 billion in commitments. Alphabet declined to comment on the filing.
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