Blue Owl Capital and HPS Investment Partners have jointly arranged a $5 billion unitranche facility for a US data centre developer, one of the largest single-borrower private credit facilities ever placed outside the investment-grade market.
The financing supports a multi-site build-out across Virginia, Texas and Ohio. The developer's three anchor tenants, all hyperscale cloud providers, underwrite long-dated leases that back the debt service coverage.
Why direct lenders won the mandate
The borrower opted for a single-counterparty private facility over a syndicated bank club to lock in certainty of execution and avoid the multi-month broadly syndicated loan process, paying a modest spread premium for the speed.
Private credit funds now originate the majority of large-scale data centre debt in the US, a category banks have been retreating from as construction risk and capex intensity climb.