Volta Infrastructure Holdings, an AI cloud startup building a data centre in Norway, is closing in on a $5bn debt financing that has become a test of how much more AI infrastructure risk lenders are willing to absorb. The package is expected to price this week at a yield of at least 11%, anchored by a $1.5bn order from Apollo, according to Semafor, which cited people familiar with the matter. Commitments were due on 14 October.

The financing is split into two pieces. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, which are running the deal, have underwritten a $1.3bn term loan but have left a separate $3.7bn chip loan without an underwrite, Bloomberg reported. The term loan will cover lease payments to Bitdeer Technologies Group, the bitcoin miner that operates the Norwegian site where Volta will run its operations, while the chip loan will fund the purchase of roughly 36,000 Nvidia graphics processing units.

Demand has been substantial but selective. The deal has drawn more than $5bn of orders, mainly from private credit investors, hedge funds and mutual funds, although it is unclear how that demand is split between the two tranches. Because the debt carries no credit rating, CLOs — a mainstay of leveraged loan demand — would ordinarily be unable to participate, leaving the book heavily reliant on private capital.

Some investors pushed back during marketing, saying they were already full on data centre debt and demanding more security and a higher rate, according to Semafor. Volta was founded in February and the Norway facility is its first significant project; some investors balked at its lack of a track record, while others were concerned about its reliance on Anthropic to buy much of the data centre's compute. In response, the deal includes an unusual provision under which the interest rate charged to Volta will fall if Anthropic obtains an investment-grade credit rating.

The pricing stands out. A yield of roughly 11% places Volta among the most expensive AI-related borrowings the leveraged loan market has seen, Bloomberg noted, and Semafor described it as unusually high for a data centre project. That comes against a backdrop of more than $450bn of AI-related debt deals completed so far this year.

For European private credit, the transaction is significant on two fronts. It shows that large-scale AI infrastructure on the continent is increasingly being financed through unrated, privately placed structures where direct lenders and opportunistic credit funds set the terms. It also shows lenders beginning to price in concentration and counterparty risk: the step-down tied to Anthropic's rating makes the tenant's credit quality an explicit variable in the cost of capital.

The banks' decision to hold back from underwriting the larger chip tranche mirrors wider caution about warehousing AI risk on balance sheet, according to Bloomberg, leaving private capital to carry a greater share of the exposure — and to command the premium that comes with it.