An anonymous seller is offering about $500m of data center loans at auction, Bloomberg says. A dozen loans are on sale at once, which is rare. The seller is taking offers through a bids-wanted-in-competition process.

The package includes debt tied to operators such as Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne. One $25m slice backs a site in New Mexico that is part of Stargate, the project shared by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. Oracle has sent the developer of that site a notice citing force majeure, a clause that can excuse a party from its obligations.

The sale comes days after a Democratic sweep of the US midterm elections, which raised doubts about many of these projects. It suggests at least one lender wants out of this exposure before those doubts work through the projects themselves.

This is a financing-market event, not a company disclosure. Financing news this week, from Oracle's $20bn equity and debt raise to Anthropic's $895bn of spending commitments, has been priced as debt-funded rather than demand-funded. Until now the market has read the strain in AI data center debt only indirectly, through CoreWeave's distressed bonds and wider credit spreads.

The auction will produce an actual price. A weak result would be the first direct read on how private lenders value these loans, as opposed to how equity investors have priced the build-out. Bids are due Nov. 19 and must be at least $10m.

© Raydn · raydn.us