A bank is auctioning $500 million of data center loans. The bids will put a price on AI's building debt

Dutch bank ING is trying to sell about $500 million of loans to data center builders in a single auction, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 5. Bids are due Nov. 19. The size is modest. The result matters more: it will be one of the first open-market prices for the debt paying for the AI buildout.

The package holds about a dozen loans, and bids must be at least $10 million. It includes debt tied to Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne, two large operators. It also includes a $25 million slice of financing for Stargate's New Mexico campus, part of the AI venture backed by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle.

ING declined to comment to Reuters, and no asking price has been disclosed. The format is what makes the sale unusual. It is a "bids wanted in competition" auction, in which many buyers price the same loans at once. Data Center Dynamics called it the first sale of its scale made up only of data center debt.

Why one small auction could move borrowing costs

Private loans don't trade on an exchange, so their value is mostly what the lender says it is. An auction replaces that estimate with real bids. If buyers pay close to face value, lenders can keep funding new campuses on today's terms.

If bids come in at a discount, every bank and fund holding similar loans gets a new, lower reference point. The next developer to borrow would likely pay more. That cost eventually shows up in what cloud and AI customers pay for computing capacity.

The timing is awkward. The sale surfaced two days after Democrats' midterm gains, which raised expectations of tougher political scrutiny of data centers. Goldman Sachs estimated that states likely to tighten rules hold about 45% of planned US capacity, with Texas alone near a quarter. Goldman called it "a delay story rather than a demand collapse" and expects pauses to be short-lived.

Credit markets were already on edge. CNBC reported on Nov. 6 that the yield on CoreWeave's 2032 bonds rose above 16%, a level usually reserved for borrowers in distress. Deutsche Bank data cited by CNBC showed the cost of insuring CoreWeave's debt against default topped its October peak on Thursday. It eased about 8% on Friday.

Stronger names are feeling it too, from far lower levels. Over the past month, default insurance on Nvidia's debt rose 76%, on Broadcom's 49% and on Amazon's 44%. Nvidia's still costs only about 1.4% of the amount insured per year, versus roughly 11% for CoreWeave.

The Stargate slice is small but pointed

The $25 million New Mexico loan is a sliver of a much larger deal. The campus, known as Project Jupiter, has reportedly secured $18 billion in loans from a group of banks, according to media reports cited by Reuters in September.

It is also the site where Oracle, the expected main tenant, sent a "force majeure" notice in September. That is a contract clause that can excuse delays caused by events outside a party's control. Oracle cited possible delays in securing power. Bloomberg reported Oracle wanted the option to delay payments if the site misses its planned 2028 opening.

Oracle has said the project remains on its planned schedule. Blue Owl, which owns developer Stack Infrastructure, said the notice did not change its financial commitments. Still, any buyer pricing that loan will weigh the dispute.

What the sale says about ING's own view is unclear. Banks sell loans routinely to manage how much of one sector they hold and to free up capital. International Business Times noted the sale does not, by itself, show the loans are distressed.

Banks are passing AI construction risk to others

The auction fits a wider pattern of lenders moving AI construction risk off their own books. In May, the Financial Times reported that JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, SMBC and MUFG were exploring ways to pass the riskiest slice of such loans to outside investors. Reports at the time said a bank group including JPMorgan and MUFG had spent more than six months trying to place $38 billion of construction debt for Oracle-leased sites in Texas and Wisconsin.

Some of that debt has gone to non-bank lenders at a discount, according to those reports. Private credit funds, which face lighter oversight than banks, are a growing source of money: the Bank of England has estimated that their share of AI investment financing jumped from 9% in 2024 to 34% in 2025.

The need for new money keeps growing. Goldman counted five AI-related bond deals totaling $67 billion since Oct. 29. Bank of America expects AI-related debt issuance to rise 31% next year to $685 billion. ING's own analysts forecast that big data center operators could sell at least €60 billion of bonds in 2027. That compares with about €35 billion so far this year.

For companies buying computing capacity, the takeaway is that AI infrastructure prices are now partly set in credit markets. Data centers leased to the largest cloud companies still borrow cheaply. Projects that depend on smaller tenants or contested power and permits do not. The Nov. 19 bids will show how wide that gap has grown. CoreWeave's results on Nov. 10 offer an earlier read on the weakest end of the market.