The data center loan secondary market just produced something the AI build-out has never had: an observable exit price. On November 5, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Dutch bank ING is seeking to sell roughly $500 million across a dozen data center loans in a single auction, using a bids-wanted-in-competition process with bids due November 19. For three years, CRE investors have underwritten data center credit from issuance documents and rating agency assumptions. In two weeks, a dozen of those loans will have a market-clearing bid attached to them. For the broader context on how AI reshapes asset-level decisions, see our guide to AI tools for real estate investors.
Key Takeaways
- ING is auctioning roughly $500 million across a dozen data center loans via a BWIC process, with bids of at least $10 million due November 19, 2026.
- This is a price discovery event, not an issuance event. Every prior data center debt story priced new paper; this one prices existing paper.
- The portfolio includes a $25 million slice of the Stargate-linked Project Jupiter campus, where Oracle filed a force majeure notice in September 2026 over power delays.
- No loans in the package are reported as impaired, which means any discount reflects repricing of risk, not realized default.
- Whatever these loans clear at becomes a reference mark for lenders, REITs, and CMBS pools holding similar data center exposure.
What ING Actually Put Up for Sale
The mechanics matter here, so start with them. A bids-wanted-in-competition, or BWIC, is a competitive auction in which a holder circulates a list of positions and invites investors to submit bids by a deadline. The seller is not obligated to trade, but the process generates real, dated bids from real buyers.
According to Bloomberg, reported by CNBC on November 6, 2026 and on the Reuters wire on November 5, the package contains twelve loans totaling about $500 million. Bids must be sized at $10 million or more and are due November 19, 2026. The portfolio includes a $25 million slice backing a large New Mexico campus that forms part of the Stargate venture involving OpenAI, SoftBank Group, and Oracle, plus debt linked to data center operators Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne. An ING spokesperson declined to comment to CNBC, and ING declined to comment to Reuters, so treat the seller's identity as press reporting attributed to people familiar with the matter rather than a company disclosure. Bloomberg's original report is paywalled.
Two details deserve emphasis because they shape the interpretation. First, no loan in the package has been reported as impaired. Second, the timing is not coincidental: the sale surfaced two days after the November 3, 2026 US midterms, and CNBC reported that the Nasdaq Composite closed down 5.5% on November 5, its worst session since April 2025, as investors priced in the possibility of tighter state and local restrictions on data center construction.
Why a Loan Auction Is Different From Every Other Data Center Debt Story
This is the part worth slowing down on, because the headline looks like one more entry in a long series of AI debt stories and it is not.
Nearly every data center financing event of the past two years has been a primary market event. A sponsor raised new debt, a lender syndicated a new loan, an issuer sold new bonds, or a regulator published a warning about the aggregate. When the Kansas City Fed flagged AI debt sitting inside bank CRE loan books and CMBS pools, it was measuring stocks and describing structures, not quoting prices. That analysis is worth reading alongside this one: see how the Kansas City Fed traced AI debt into CRE loans and CMBS. Likewise, the wave of data center debt securitization and single-tenant structures like the lease-backed bond secured by one Meta building told you what the market would pay for new risk at issuance.
A BWIC is the other side of that. It asks what an existing holder can get today for risk already on the books. That distinction is the whole story for a CRE debt investor, because a secondary bid is the only number that is not an assumption. Issuance spreads are negotiated. Appraisals are opinions. Rating agency stresses are models. A bid is what somebody will actually wire.
It is also not the first sign that banks want out. CNBC noted a May 3, 2026 Financial Times report that JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley had been exploring ways to cut data center construction exposure, including private sales to non-bank lenders and significant risk transfers. What is new in November is that the exit is happening in a competitive, dated, multi-bidder format rather than a quiet bilateral trade.
The Project Jupiter Slice Is the Tell
Of the twelve loans, the $25 million Stargate-linked piece carries the most information, because that project already has a documented stress event.
On September 24, 2026, Oracle sent a force majeure notice to a unit of Blue Owl Capital, the developer of Project Jupiter in southern New Mexico, citing potential delays in securing power. Reuters reported several structural details from a person familiar with the matter: Oracle cannot terminate the lease under any circumstances and is not trying to exit as the main tenant. Instead, invoking force majeure extends the period during which Oracle pays the lower development-stage rent, pushing out the step-up if the campus misses its 2028 delivery date. Blue Owl, which owns developer STACK Infrastructure, holds roughly $3 billion of equity in the project, earns a 9% yield on that equity during the development stage, and expects a levered yield near 11% on completion. Blue Owl said the notice does not change the financial commitments to the project, and Oracle said Project Jupiter remains on its planned schedule. The 1,400-acre campus reportedly secured about $18 billion in loans from a consortium of banks.
Note what that structure does to a lender. The tenant stays on the hook but pays less for longer, while the debt stack keeps accruing its cost. CNBC, citing the Financial Times, reported in September that the project's $18 billion of debt was already trading at stressed levels. Reporting from Engineering News-Record places the cause squarely in the power stack: the campus fuel cell microgrid still awaits a state air quality permit and the supporting gas pipeline's in-service date slipped to 2027.
That is a recognizable CRE pattern wearing new clothes. A delivery delay driven by an entitlement or utility approval shifts rent commencement, and every month of shift is absorbed by whoever sits lowest in the capital stack. The AI-specific wrinkle is that the delay risk here is concentrated in power interconnection and air permits rather than in construction labor or materials.
What a Secondary Bid Changes in Your Underwriting
Pricing on the ING package has not been disclosed, and you should resist the temptation to guess at it. The useful work is deciding in advance what you will do with the number once it exists.
- Treat November 19 as a mark date. If these loans clear near par, the market is telling you the midterm selloff was an equity story that did not reach credit. A meaningful discount on unimpaired loans says something different: that buyers are repricing power and entitlement delay risk, not default risk.
- Separate the two risks in your own models. Delay risk and credit risk are not the same exposure. Project Jupiter is the clean example: the tenant is still obligated, so this is a timing and rent-step problem, not a vacancy problem.
- Ask your lender what it holds and what it has distributed. If your lender runs a lend-to-distribute book, its appetite for your next deal depends on whether it can move paper. A failed or heavily discounted auction tightens that channel.
- Look through your indirect exposure. If you own REIT shares, CMBS, or an insurance-wrapped product, you may hold data center credit you never underwrote. The Kansas City Fed's work is the map for tracing it.
- Check the permit calendar, not just the rent roll. For data center adjacent assets, the binding constraint is increasingly a utility or air quality docket. Those have dates you can diary.
Here is a hypothetical illustration of why the clearing price matters, using round assumed numbers rather than reported ones. Assume a $25 million par loan paying a 7% coupon on par, or $1.75 million a year, and assume a buyer purchases it at 90 cents on the dollar for $22.5 million. The buyer's current yield is $1.75 million divided by $22.5 million, or about 7.8%, before any recovery of the $2.5 million discount at par repayment. The same loan bought at 97 cents costs $24.25 million and yields about 7.2%. Those two prices describe very different views of delay risk on identical collateral, which is exactly why a dated auction result is more informative than another round of commentary.
De-Risking or Retreat? The Honest Answer Is Not Yet Known
It would be easy to read a $500 million auction as a lender fleeing. The people closest to this market are more careful, and so should you be.
Hank Calenti, global markets strategist at SMBC, told CNBC that investment banks typically use a lend-to-distribute model for these loans and that buyers range from private credit investors through asset managers to insurers, who take the paper for its higher expected returns. On whether more sales follow, he framed it as arithmetic rather than panic: the decision turns on the discount a bank accepts versus the benefit of freeing up capacity for new lending, with the cost including, in his words, explaining the exposure to your board. His summary is the fairest available read: this could be business as usual, or financiers looking to exit before the door shuts.
Pruksa Iamthongthong, head of APAC equities at Aberdeen Investments, told CNBC that the midterm results raised concerns about greater scrutiny of data center development at a time when investors were already questioning the financing and returns behind AI capital spending, and that near-term volatility could continue as the market assesses construction delays and compute capacity constraints.
Both readings are consistent with the same facts, which is why the auction result carries real information. The political backdrop also connects to a risk we covered earlier in the week: local voters are now a gating item for data center sites, as laid out in our analysis of what data center ballot measures mean for entitlement risk. The ING auction is the credit market's response to the same political development, arriving through price rather than through zoning.
What to Watch Next
Two dates are worth putting on a calendar. Bids on the ING package are due November 19, 2026, and any reported clearing levels will be the first broad secondary reference for US data center construction loans. Separately, the state air quality decision on the Project Jupiter fuel cell system has been expected in late November 2026, and that outcome feeds directly back into the delay risk embedded in the $25 million slice.
Beyond the dates, watch whether other banks follow with their own BWICs. One auction is a portfolio decision. Three or four in a quarter would establish that data center loans have become a traded asset class with a visible price, which would change how every CRE lender sizes its construction book.
If you are holding data center exposure directly or through a fund, REIT, or CMBS position and want help tracing it and stress testing delivery delay scenarios, The AI Consulting Network works with CRE investors on exactly this kind of exposure mapping.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a BWIC and why does it matter for CRE investors?
A: A bids-wanted-in-competition is an auction in which a holder circulates a list of positions and collects competitive bids by a set deadline. It matters because it produces a dated, observable price for existing loans rather than a negotiated spread on new issuance, giving CRE investors a real mark instead of a model assumption.
Q: Are the data center loans being auctioned in default?
A: No loan in the reported package has been described as impaired. That is central to reading the result: any discount would reflect the market repricing delay and regulatory risk on performing loans rather than recovering value on defaulted ones.
Q: What did Oracle's force majeure notice actually do?
A: According to Reuters, Oracle cannot terminate the Project Jupiter lease and is not exiting as the main tenant. The September 24, 2026 notice, citing power delays, extends the period in which Oracle pays the lower development-stage rent, deferring the step-up if the campus misses its 2028 delivery date. Oracle has said the project remains on its planned schedule.
Q: Should CRE investors avoid data center credit now?
A: The auction is a reason to measure exposure, not a signal to exit. The specific question to answer is whether your data center risk is a timing problem tied to power and permits or a tenant credit problem, because those two require different underwriting and have different recoveries.
Q: How would I know if I hold data center debt indirectly?
A: Look through REIT holdings, CMBS and ABS pools, insurance-linked products, and any debt fund allocations, then ask sponsors directly for data center concentration by megawatt and by tenant. The Kansas City Fed's October 2026 bulletin documents the specific channels through which this debt reaches bank CRE books and securitized pools.