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Texas Grid Review Leaves Banks Holding a $15B AI Loan
Banks led by Morgan Stanley have delayed plans to sell bonds refinancing part of a $15 billion loan for a Texas data centre leased to Anthropic, after the state paused new projects to review grid risks.
A $15 billion construction loan for one of the largest AI data centres in Texas is staying on banks' balance sheets longer than planned. The lenders, led by Morgan Stanley, had intended to refinance part of it this autumn with a high-yield bond sale of $5 billion to $7 billion, but have delayed it after Texas paused new projects while it reviews the risks to its power grid, Bloomberg reported on October 28, as summarised by Finimize. The sale may now be spread over the next year.
The project is a campus in Hubbard, near Waco, developed by Nexus Data Centers, leased to Anthropic and backed by Alphabet's Google. The bridge loan is already funded, so construction money is not at risk; what changes is who carries the exposure and for how long. Finimize described the outcome as a potential "hung bridge", a loan that banks expected to sell but have to keep, which ties up capital they would otherwise use for other deals.
The trigger was a decision in Austin. In August Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT, the state grid operator, to audit every data centre seeking a grid connection, Bloomberg Law reported, and Texas authorities were later directed to halt data-centre permits until the review is finished. ERCOT's interconnection queue held more than 1,800 projects asking for over 474 gigawatts, several times the grid's record demand, and reviews cover electricity use, on-site generation, water, cooling, tax incentives and ownership. No end date has been given.
For investors in AI infrastructure debt, the delay matters more than its size. Lenders have financed the build-out on the assumption that loans can be packaged and sold to bond investors once a project is under way. When a regulator can stop new connections, the timetable for those sales becomes a political variable, and banks may respond with higher margins, stricter terms or smaller commitments, Finimize noted, raising costs for large single-site projects in the state.
The episode also shows a constraint that chip orders do not capture. Earlier this month Microsoft walked away from a planned AI campus in England because the grid could not power it until the 2030s; in Texas, the grid is available but its owner wants to check who gets it. Electricity, not semiconductors, is increasingly the scarce input in the AI build-out, and credit markets are starting to price that.
Sources: Bloomberg — Banks shelve bond sale for Anthropic-tied Texas data center (Oct 28, 2026); Finimize — Banks put off selling Anthropic data center debt; Bloomberg Law — Abbott orders audit of Texas data centers seeking grid access; FOX 7 Austin — Gov. Abbott orders pause for all data centers until ERCOT audit is finished