

Oracle’s deluge of AI debt pushes Wall Street to the limit
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Oracle’s $300 billion megadeal with OpenAI is testing the limits of Wall Street’s appetite for debt tied to America’s data-center boom.Banks including JPMorgan Chase struggled for months to spread the risk of billions of dollars in loans they made to build data centers leased to Oracle in Texas and Wisconsin, people familiar with the matter said. Many financial institutions that would ordinarily buy those loans face restrictions on how much exposure they can have to a single counterparty, and the sheer size of these debt packages pushed them to the limit with Oracle.
As a result, bank balance sheets got clogged, constraining the financing prospects of future projects tied to Oracle and OpenAI.For example, lenders balked at financing the expansion of a data-center complex in Abilene, Texas, if Oracle were the tenant, according to people familiar with the matter. That led the developer, Crusoe, to lease it to Microsoft instead.The challenges surrounding Oracle highlight a risk for the multitrillion-dollar data center boom, where limited access to capital compounds obstacles caused by a strained electric grid and a growing public backlash.Any slowdown in data center construction and completion would stymie a build-out that AI players desperately need.
Some top AI companies appear to be hitting the limit of what they can offer users as demand for computing firepower, which is provided by data centers, exceeds supply.Lenders grew more comfortable with Oracle-related projects after the company said it would raise all the money it needed for 2026 by issuing roughly $50 billion in stock and bonds. Oracle said in a post on X last week that each data center it is developing for OpenAI is moving
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