ING Seeks to Offload $500M in Data Center Loans in Single Auction

ING is looking to sell roughly $500 million in data center loans in a single auction, according to Bloomberg — the first sale of its kind at that scale to consist exclusively of data center debt.

The Dutch bank is running a bids-wanted-in-competition process covering about a dozen loans, with bids due November 19. Each bid must be at least $10 million in size. That floor matters: it signals ING is courting institutional buyers rather than spreading the portfolio across smaller distressed-debt specialists.

What is in the portfolio?

The loans span some of the sector's most prominent names:

• A $25 million debt stake in a Stargate data center project in New Mexico
• Debts tied to Vantage Data Centers
• Debts tied to CyrusOne

The Stargate exposure is the most revealing item. The New Mexico site is part of Project Jupiter, a facility with planned capacity of up to 2.5GW, being built by Stack and BorderPlex Digital Assets.

Why does the Stargate loan stand out?

The project has hit real-world friction. In September, Oracle sent a 'force majeure' notice to Blue Owl Capital, seeking to shield itself from potential increased costs on the facility. The site has faced challenges securing gas power connections — a reminder that gigawatt-scale data centers are, first and foremost, power projects with buildings attached.

Construction has not stalled entirely. The first phase was topped out this October. Still, a lender choosing to exit a $25 million position in a project backed by Oracle and Blue Owl, while it is still under construction, tells the market something about how banks now price data center risk.

How nervous is the market?

The timing is not incidental. The auction lands just as data center and AI stocks crashed, driven by debt fears, and after a US election in which voters in several jurisdictions sided against further data center development.

The uncertainty is concentrated in financing. Market unease about debt levels in the sector is growing, particularly around neoclouds — the smaller cloud operators racing to build AI capacity on borrowed money. ING's sale is the first auction of this scale made up solely of data center debt, which makes it a live test of where secondary-market buyers actually value these assets, rather than where originators claim to.

What is not being said?

ING has not, according to the report, framed the sale as a retreat from the sector. But the structure invites questions. Selling a dozen loans at once, rather than individually, typically favors speed over price. For a bank holding performing loans, that is an unusual choice; for one trimming concentrated exposure ahead of a repricing, it is standard practice.

The auction results, due after November 19, will offer the first broad, price-discovery datapoint for data center debt — at the moment the sector's equity story has started to wobble.