Banks Including SocGen, MUFG Pull Back From Data Center Loan Deals

Some of the largest lenders to the artificial intelligence build out are becoming more choosy about the deals they take on as market volatility and rising yields give lenders reasons to choose safer deals over more speculative ones.

Lenders including Société Générale, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group have become more selective in lending to data center projects, people arranging the deals say. That narrows the pool of banks available to syndicate large multibillion-dollar loans needed for data center projects and other AI infrastructure.

Those banks had previously funded high-profile deals, with Société Générale leading a $7.1 billion debt deal for the first site in OpenAI and Oracle’s Project Stargate. MUFG helped lead a $38 billion financing for two more Oracle projects, while SMBC helped lead the $18 billion financing for Oracle’s New Mexico project.