OpenAI’s data centre partners are on course to amass almost $100 billion (€86.4 billion) in borrowing tied to the loss-making start-up, as the ChatGPT maker benefits from a debt-fuelled spending spree without taking on financial risks itself.
SoftBank, Oracle and CoreWeave have borrowed at least $30 billion to invest in the start-up or help build its data centres, according to FT analysis.
Investment group Blue Owl Capital and computing infrastructure companies such as Crusoe also rely on deals with OpenAI to service about $28 billion in loans.
A group of banks is in talks to lend another $38 billion for Oracle and data centre builder Vantage to fund further sites for OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal is expected to be finalised in the coming weeks.
RM Block
OpenAI executives have said they plan to raise substantial debt to help pay for these contracts, but so far the financial burden has fallen to its counterparties and their lenders.
“That’s been kind of the strategy,” said a senior OpenAI executive. “How does [OpenAI] leverage other people’s balance sheets?”
The scale of the loans that depend on OpenAI will add to scrutiny of the $1.4 trillion of deals it has signed this year to procure computing power from chipmakers and data centre companies over the next eight years.
These commitments far exceed the start-up’s expected annualised revenue of $20 billion this year.
The start-up has little debt on its own balance sheet, according to people close to the company. OpenAI has a $4 billion credit facility with several US banks, which it secured last year but has yet to draw.
It needs vast computing power to train and run the advanced models behind its chatbot and other tools such as video generators.
OpenAI said: “Building AI infrastructure is the single most important thing we can do to meet surging global demand … The current compute shortage is the single biggest constraint on OpenAI’s ability to grow.”
SoftBank, Vantage, CoreWeave, Crusoe and Blue Owl declined to comment. Oracle did not respond.
The San Francisco-based start-up, which recently became the world’s most valuable private company worth $500 billion, believes it needs even more capital to fund data centres, chips and power in its push to create “artificial general intelligence” – systems that surpass human abilities.
The $100 billion of bonds, bank loans and private credit deals tied to OpenAI are equivalent to the net debt directly held by the six largest corporate borrowers in the world – including carmakers Volkswagen and Toyota and telecoms groups AT&T and Comcast – according to a 2024 report by asset manager Janus Henderson.
Debts linked to OpenAI may already be significantly higher. Many of the start-up’s partners, including SoftBank and CoreWeave, have borrowed greater sums this year that have not been explicitly tied to the start-up.
SoftBank has raised about $20 billion this year for its AI investments, with OpenAI by far the largest. A person close to SoftBank said $1bn of its $8.5 billion bridge loan to fund its capital injection into OpenAI has been repaid. They added that several billion dollars it raised this year were used to redeem existing bonds rather than for new investments.
CoreWeave has large contracts to supply computing power to Microsoft, and has borrowed more than $10 billion to lease data centre space to meet those obligations. Some of that capacity may ultimately flow to OpenAI through its Microsoft deals.
Debts linked to OpenAI are likely to grow as its partners try to fulfil their huge contracts with the start-up.
Oracle has already sold $18 billion in corporate bonds to pay for infrastructure commitments to OpenAI. Analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets predict that Larry Ellison’s tech group will have to borrow $100 billion over the next four years to deliver its OpenAI contracts.
That is likely to include the $38 billion debt package for data centres being developed for Oracle by Vantage Data Centres in Texas and Wisconsin.
Many data centre loans have been made to special purpose vehicles (SPVs), including more obscure structures such as variable interest entities, which serve to shield investors and developers from risk in the event of a default.
Vantage is preparing to use SPVs for the loans on the Texas and Wisconsin sites, according to people close to the talks.
Blue Owl and Crusoe set up a joint SPV to build OpenAI’s first US data centre in Abilene, Texas. The joint venture borrowed about $10 billion from JPMorgan to fund construction, which will be repaid via Oracle’s 17-year lease on the site.
The loan, however, has no recourse to Blue Owl or Crusoe, meaning JPMorgan would take ownership of the land and data centre if Oracle failed to pay.
Blue Owl also used a wholly owned SPV to borrow $18 billion from a group of mostly Japanese banks for a second site in New Mexico, which Oracle is leasing for OpenAI. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
