Vantage Data Centers seeks $2bn in loans from Pimco and PGIM

Data centre developer Vantage Data Centers is in talks with institutional investors including Pimco and PGIM to raise up to $2bn for its data centre build-outs, as massive AI spending pushes Wall Street banks to their lending limits.

Known as “Project Baja”, the latest debt-raising effort would allow Vantage to tap a new pool of investors after borrowing tens of billions of dollars from large banks in the past year to keep up with the soaring AI demand, according to people familiar with the matter.

Rather than raising debt for a specific project, the new revolving loan would allow Vantage to use the proceeds across multiple locations, including data centre campuses in Virginia and Nevada, the people said.

Discussions on the deal began in the first half of this year, but borrowing terms were under negotiation and could still change, the people added.

Vantage said the additional borrowing capacity would allow it to meet “customers’ growing digital infrastructure needs.”

“We are excited to expand on our relationships with the institutional lending community and appreciate their long-term partnership,” Scott Beasley, global chief financial officer of Vantage, told the FT in an email statement.

Pimco and PGIM declined to comment. DigitalBridge did not respond to requests for comment.

Vantage Data Centers has borrowed nearly $48bn since the beginning of 2025 to fund its hyperscale data centre projects across Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio, according to data compiled by Infralogic. It is also a major infrastructure partner for Oracle’s flagship Stargate project, under which OpenAI agreed to purchase $300bn in computing power from the tech giant.

The deluge of AI-driven borrowings has overwhelmed Wall Street’s project finance capacity — which traditionally funds the construction of airports and gas pipelines — prompting new data centre projects to seek capital in other corners of the financial market.

Some banks are also looking to rein in their concentrated exposure to individual project developers and tech firms by offloading AI debt in the bond market or through risk-transfer deals.

The pivot to the institutional market highlights a race by companies in the AI ecosystem to broaden their capital pool amid rising borrowing costs for data centre build-outs, with investors growing increasingly wary of tech companies’ mounting debt pile and long-term profitability.