ING reportedly seeks buyers for $500 million in data center loans as AI debt worries grow

ING is looking for buyers for a portfolio of 12 data center loans valued at roughly $500 million, joining a wider effort by banks to distribute credit risk connected to the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The auction is said to feature a $25 million piece tied to the Stargate project in New Mexico, a venture involving OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, as well as certain other loan assets linked to Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne.

ING plans to hold a bids-wanted-in-competition, or BWIC, auction, with bids of $10 million or more due by Nov. 19, according to Bloomberg. A BWIC is a competitive process that lets investors bid on portions of a loan portfolio. An ING spokesperson declined to comment.

The planned sale points to a growing market in which banks shift data center loans to private credit firms, asset managers and insurers as financing for the AI boom continues to expand.

Investment banks generally follow a lend-to-distribute model for these types of loans, said Hank Calenti, global markets strategist at SMBC. "The buyers can range from private credit investors through asset managers to insurers. They would buy these assets for their expected higher returns," he said.

The ING sale comes at a time of mounting concern over the soaring debt funding the AI build-out and the possibility that returns could disappoint investors. Those worries have picked up pace following the Democrats' sweeping win in the U.S. midterms, a result that could lead to moratoriums or tighter restrictions on data center construction in certain states.

The perceived threat of a construction slowdown sent AI-related stocks into a steep slide on Thursday. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index closed down 5.5%, its worst day since April 2025, leaving the index in correction territory.

"Whether banks sell more based on AI data centers moratorium fears should be driven by the cost (discount received) versus the benefit of exiting to free up cash for further lending, where the cost includes explaining the exposure to your board," Calenti told CNBC via email. "This could be business as usual, or financiers looking to exit before the door shuts."

Pruksa Iamthongthong, head of APAC equities at Aberdeen Investments, said the Democrats' gains have heightened concerns about greater scrutiny of data center development, just as investors were already questioning the financing and returns behind the scale of AI capital spending. "We think near-term volatility could continue as the market assesses potential delays to U.S. data center construction and constraints around compute capacity."

Earlier this year, Wall Street lenders including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were said to be exploring various ways to reduce their lending exposure to data center construction. A Financial Times report on May 3 said the options included offloading portions of debt through private sales to non-bank lenders, as well as so-called significant risk transfers, which shift part of a bank's credit risk to investors in order to free up balance sheet capacity.