Ares provides $2.4B debt package to Vantage to accelerate AI-era data center builds

Ares Management has arranged a $2.4 billion debt financing package for Vantage Data Centers intended to accelerate the operator’s North American buildout of AI‑optimized capacity. Under the agreement Ares has committed $1.6 billion and has already advanced roughly $330 million to get initial projects underway; the remainder completes the facility that will also refinance portions of Vantage’s existing obligations. A portion of the proceeds is earmarked for facilities expected to serve a strategic Oracle–OpenAI computing relationship, linking the capital to anticipated high‑intensity AI workloads. The parties declined to disclose detailed economic terms. The deal is a concrete example of private‑credit managers moving beyond opportunistic loans into bespoke infrastructure financing, stepping into roles historically dominated by banks and public markets. Market participants are increasingly matching long‑dated, asset‑backed credit structures to the unusual economics of GPU‑dense, power‑hungry data halls — a trend that has produced other multi‑billion‑dollar facilities and alternative structures such as chip‑leasing vehicles and accelerator‑backed credit. Those structures help operators compress time from ground‑break to revenue by providing up‑front capital when anchor customers are presold or otherwise committed, but they also concentrate execution risk: timely grid upgrades, local permitting, cooling and power distribution work, and global accelerator supply chains can materially affect when a facility can start generating cash flow. For Vantage, the package reduces near‑term execution and liquidity risk, helps convert planned capacity into revenue‑generating assets faster, and may extend or refinance maturities on existing obligations. For Ares, the loan exposure offers secured, long‑dated cash flows tied to physical data‑hall assets and anchored customers — attractive in a low‑yield environment — but it also concentrates lender exposure around a narrow set of counterparties and specialized equipment. The transaction is therefore both a validation of private capital as an enabler of AI infrastructure and a reminder that lenders are now underwriting sector‑specific operational and market risks. If anchor tenants perform and supply‑chain and permitting timelines hold, bespoke private‑credit packages like this could accelerate capacity delivery; conversely, delays or shifts in hyperscaler demand would test covenant design and recoverability for lenders and could tighten terms on future financings.