Dutch lender ING is putting about $500 million of data-centre loans up for sale in a single transaction, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, in the latest sign that the funding boom behind the artificial intelligence build-out is coming under strain.
The portfolio includes a $25 million loan tied to a large data centre in New Mexico that forms part of Stargate, the artificial intelligence infrastructure venture backed by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the matter.
ING is seeking bids for about a dozen loans through a bids-wanted-in-competition process, Bloomberg said. Bids are due by November 19 and must be for at least $10 million. The portfolio also includes debt linked to data-centre operators Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne.
The sale comes after a sharp sell-off in chipmakers and so-called neocloud companies — firms that rent out computing power for AI workloads — which have been among the market’s hardest-hit stocks this week. Investors have grown nervous about the scale of borrowing funding the AI infrastructure boom, and about the prospect of tougher regulation after the Democrats’ sweeping victory in the US midterm elections.
The sell-off has wiped about $3 trillion from the market value of S&P 500 companies, according to Reuters. Data-centre operators Applied Digital, Cipher Mining and IREN each fell more than 14 per cent.
The report has not been independently verified. Reuters said it could not immediately verify Bloomberg’s account, and ING did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.
The sale, if completed, would mark one of the first times a major European lender has sought to offload a large block of data-centre debt in a single deal, and it will be watched closely as a test of investor appetite for the loans that have financed the AI boom.
Sources: Reuters — “ING puts $500 million of data center loans up for sale, Bloomberg News reports” (https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ing-puts-500-million-data-center-loans-up-sale-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-11-06/). Note: this story is based on a single report by Bloomberg News, which Reuters said it could not immediately verify; ING has not commented.
