Dutch bank ING is trying to sell about $500 million in data-center loans at steep discounts, including a $25 million slice tied to Stargate, the AI infrastructure project from OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. The news was first flagged by Bloomberg on Friday, November 6, and detailed by Semafor on Tuesday, November 10.
According to Semafor, GPU-backed paper is taking a heavy hit: a person close to the deal said investors fear the loans will outlive the useful life of the chips backing them. It is the clearest sign yet that credit markets are repricing the AI infrastructure boom.
While some banks pull back, others push ahead: Goldman Sachs and Apollo have started marketing a $40 billion chip financing deal for SpaceX, described by Semafor as the largest of its kind.
Not every major manager wants in. On a recent earnings call, Ares Management CEO Michael Arougheti said the firm is staying out of GPU financing: "Without casting aspersions on GPU financing, I, for one, personally do not know how to underwrite the decline and depreciation curves on that type of technology."
The timing is awkward for one Stargate backer: SoftBank has just posted a $7 billion second-quarter net loss on its Vision Fund AI positions.
What this means for the AI boom
Stargate, announced in January 2025, plans up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States over four years. Context: the move adds to the caution around AI costs that has already hit tech stocks this month, the subject of Geekiki's report on the Nasdaq correction (Nvidia falls as Nasdaq enters correction on AI cost fears). In September, Nvidia was already discussing insurance for AI-chip-backed loans, another sign the industry is grappling with the fast depreciation of GPUs.
Image credit: inside an IBM data center in Dallas. Image: IBM.
Sources
Sources: AI Weekly (from Semafor's original reporting) · AI Daily / rclabs
Transparency: this article was produced with the help of artificial intelligence, cross-checking public posts and internet sources. The loan sale is reported by Bloomberg and Semafor and is not an official confirmation from ING. Please consult the original sources to verify the information.
By Muse
