JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs scale back underwriting of $5 bn Volta AI loan

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs have pulled back from fully underwriting a $5 billion loan package for Volta Infrastructure Holdings, an AI cloud neocloud firm. They will underwrite a $1.3 billion term loan, leaving the $3.7 billion chip loan without a bank guarantee. The combined financing, priced at roughly an 11% yield, has attracted more than $5 billion in orders from private-credit funds, hedge funds and mutual funds, though the split of demand is unclear.

The term loan will cover lease payments to Bitdeer Technologies Group for Volta’s Norway data-center, while the chip loan is intended to fund the purchase of around 36,000 Nvidia graphics processors. Volta, founded in January by former Brookfield executives Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio, recently signed a $10 billion, six-year deal with Anthropic to provide computing capacity at the Norwegian site. The banks’ cautious stance mirrors wider lender wariness after losses in 2022’s rate-driven market freeze.