It’s 2026, and tech companies keep insisting that they need to spend huge amounts of money on AI data centers. Yet for all its enthusiasm over the past few years, Wall Street is finally starting to pay attention to the numbers.
according to New reporting by business insiderJPMorgan Chase is having trouble finding investors interested in repaying billions of dollars of debt Of the first five Stargate data centers.
Stargate is Donald Trump’s $500 billion AI project led by tech companies Oracle and OpenAI. Its goal is unclear, OpenAI has explainedThe aim is to “secure American leadership in AI”, which will somehow “support the re-industrialization of the United States” and “provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of the United States and its allies.”
But if JPMorgan – which led the financial lender through the $38 billion Stargate debt raise – is already struggling to sell the vision, all this may be easier said than done. Per BIA person familiar with both data centers said they are fully financed, although banks and other investors are wary of pouring even more money into the megaproject.
“We are hearing from market participants that in some cases, there may be banks that may have reached their level of risk that they are comfortable with, in terms of certain data center projects,” said Dhawal Shah, director of S&P Global Infrastructure Ratings. BI.
That could mean trouble for Oracle, the cloud giant tapped to provide the physical infrastructure for Stargate. back in september, S&P Global noted It was considering lowering Oracle’s credit rating – which investors use to assess a company’s creditworthiness – to below BBB.
scale moves From AAA at the top to D, or the default, at the bottom. Anything below BBB- would put Oracle into junk-bond territory, significantly increasing the cost of borrowing more debt. In other words, Stargate may soon be seen as so risky that the finances behind its data centers will become untenable.
To put the problem of two initial data centers into perspective, Trump said last year that Stargate might need that many. 20 data centers when all is said and done. If the market is already reaching its comfortable limits, it’s hard to imagine a world where Stargate moves forward without significant modifications.
“I’m very surprised that these loans were even underwritten at that time,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at the firm DA Davidson. BIReferring to data centers to pass Was funded. “The market has indicated that this is not investment-grade debt.”
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