Banks led by Morgan Stanley have assembled roughly $15 billion in debt to finance a 2,000-acre AI data center campus under construction in Hubbard, Texas, leased to Anthropic and backstopped by Google β and, according to the Financial Times, the lenders are already moving to sell most of that exposure off their own balance sheets. For a real estate industry watching data centers reshape how land, power and construction capital move around Texas, the deal is a case study in just how large β and how quickly recycled β commercial financing for AI infrastructure has become.
CNBC reported July 30 that developer Nexus Data Centers was in advanced talks to secure the financing for the Hubbard campus, a project that includes an on-site natural-gas plant with 1.6 gigawatts of generating capacity to power the buildout. Bloomberg’s reporting the same day described the package as a roughly $14 billion bridge loan paired with a revolving credit facility, with Alphabet’s Google lending its investment-grade credit rating to backstop four Anthropic data-center leases and the associated power-purchase agreements. In exchange, Google is expected to take an equity stake of about 20% in the data-center and power project.
Banks Want This Debt Off Their Books
What makes the deal notable for real estate finance isn’t just its size β it’s the exit plan. Both CNBC and the Financial Times reported that Morgan Stanley and the other lenders intend to sell down their commitments through the bond market as soon as the loans are drawn, splitting the $15 billion across multiple bond sales and potentially additional refinancing in the leveraged loan market. It’s a familiar playbook from large-scale commercial construction lending β originate, then syndicate β but at a scale and pace that underscores how nervous banks have grown about sitting on concentrated AI-infrastructure debt, even when it’s backstopped by a name as strong as Google.
Neither Anthropic nor Morgan Stanley has confirmed deal terms publicly. CNBC’s report noted that Anthropic and Nexus Data Centers both declined to comment, and that Google and Morgan Stanley did not respond to requests for comment β meaning the financing structure, while consistently reported across multiple outlets, remains unconfirmed by the parties involved.
The Land and Power Squeeze Behind the Deal
Hubbard is a small Hill County town roughly halfway between Dallas and Waco, and the scale of a 2,000-acre single-tenant campus there is emblematic of a pattern RealtyWire has tracked across Texas and beyond this year: hyperscale AI buildouts absorbing land and construction labor that would otherwise go toward housing. RealtyWire previously reported that data centers are outbidding homebuilders for land at prices builders call “impossible,” and that construction job openings jumped 36% in June as the data center boom pulled skilled labor away from residential projects. The Hubbard campus joins a growing list of Texas mega-projects racing to lock down land, power and capital simultaneously β including Galaxy Digital’s $3.5 billion bond deal for CoreWeave’s Dickens County campus and Meta and BlackRock’s $14 billion venture for an El Paso data center.
The on-site 1.6-gigawatt gas plant is its own real estate and infrastructure story: rather than wait on grid interconnection queues that can take years, developers are increasingly building their own power generation alongside the data halls, a trend that shortens construction timelines but adds another layer of permitting, land-use and environmental review to already massive projects.
What It Means
The core, corroborated facts here β the roughly $15 billion figure, Morgan Stanley’s lead role, the Hubbard, Texas location, the 2,000-acre footprint and Google’s backstop role β are consistent across CNBC, Bloomberg and the Financial Times, general-press outlets with direct sourcing on bank financing deals. The banks’ intent to sell down the debt via bond sales is also multiply reported, though it describes a plan still in motion rather than a completed transaction. What remains genuinely unconfirmed, absent comment from Anthropic, Google or Morgan Stanley, is the final shape of the deal and whether the bond sales clear at the terms being discussed β that’s reported deal mechanics RealtyWire is flagging as reported, not established fact.
For commercial real estate, the bigger signal is structural: banks are treating AI data center debt the way they’ve long treated construction loans on large mixed-use or industrial projects β originate to distribute rather than hold β and investor appetite for that paper will say a lot about how much more Texas land gets converted to data center use before the market decides it has enough.
What to Watch
Whether the bond sales for the Hubbard financing price and clear as planned, whether Anthropic, Google or Morgan Stanley issue any on-record confirmation of deal terms, and whether Hill County or ERCOT officials weigh in on the on-site gas plant’s permitting β a dynamic already playing out statewide as Texas regulators scrutinize data centers’ grid and land impact.
