AI chip loans head for the discount bin as ING shops $500M portfolio

The money that flooded into AI data centers is suddenly looking for the exit. Portfolios of data-center loans are being shopped at steep discounts, according to Semafor, with GPU-backed financings in particular described as “getting smoked.” The fear: the loans will still be on the books long after the chips they fund stop being useful.

ING is the latest to test the market. Bloomberg reported Friday that the Dutch bank wants to offload $500 million of data-center loans, a package that includes a $25 million slice tied to Stargate — the data-center venture from OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle.

The bigger exam comes next. Goldman Sachs and Apollo have begun marketing a $40 billion chip financing deal for SpaceX, the largest of its kind, and now have to convince investors to actually buy in.

Not everyone is playing along. Ares Management CEO Michael Arougheti told listeners on a recent earnings call that his firm would sit these deals out. “Without casting aspersions on GPU financing,” he said, “I, for one, personally do not know how to underwrite the decline and depreciation curves on that type of technology.”