Sources: Meta's “Project Walleye” Ohio data center seeks $3B in loans in a first-of-its-kind deal where lenders will fund both the building and the power assets
‘Project Walleye’ lenders would be first to fund both construction and power — A data centre campus backed …
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta's Ohio financing effort extends a pattern of separating the funding of AI-oriented data-center buildouts from the company balance sheet. That pattern was already visible in its Hyperion joint venture with Blue Owl, where Meta retained a minority equity stake, and in reported SPV financing for data-center debt.
What is distinct here is the proposed combination of construction and power assets in one lending package. It arrives as capital providers also target power-ready development capacity, including Silver Lake's effort to assemble powered data-center sites.
First-order effects
- Meta could obtain dedicated debt for both the Ohio campus build and its power infrastructure, broadening the set of assets financed outside a conventional corporate borrowing structure.
- Lenders would take underwriting exposure to the campus's power assets alongside the building, making power delivery a central term of the financing rather than merely a project prerequisite.
Second-order effects
- Other hyperscalers and data-center developers may have a clearer template for bundling power and construction financing, particularly where securing usable capacity is as consequential as building shell space.
- Financiers, utilities, and powered-land developers would face greater pressure to standardize how power availability, asset ownership, and delivery risk are allocated in project debt.
Third-order effects
- If replicated, AI infrastructure finance may evolve from financing data-center real estate alone toward integrated, power-linked project structures, drawing more private-credit capital into the sector.
- That shift can expand buildout capacity while concentrating execution risk in the financing chain: delays or shortfalls in power delivery would affect both facility utilization and debt performance.
The trend: This is a data point in the financialization of AI compute infrastructure, with capital structures increasingly designed around access to power as well as data-center construction.