JPMorgan, Goldman Underwrite Only $1.3B of Volta's $5B AI Loan

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are underwriting only $1.3 billion of Volta Infrastructure Holdings' $5 billion leveraged loan, leaving the $3.7 billion slice earmarked for about 36,000 Nvidia GPUs to clear with investors on a best-efforts basis. Bloomberg, via reporter Claire Ruckin, called it "a rare move to limit exposure by underwriting just $1.3B."

The relaunched deal prices at SOFR plus 625 to 650 basis points with an original issue discount of 97 to 98, an all-in yield of 11.21% to 11.75%. An earlier August-September attempt at SOFR plus 500 basis points failed to clear; buyers came back asking for roughly 125 to 150 basis points more spread, plus the discount. Commitments are due October 14.

The $1.3 billion the banks are underwriting is a first-lien term loan C that will cash-collateralize a letter of credit backing a data-center lease with Bitdeer Technologies at a site in Norway. Anthropic has committed to a six-year compute-capacity agreement at the same site, separately reported at $10 billion.

Volta raised $300 million in equity earlier this year at a $2.4 billion valuation. It has limited operating history and leverage well above public peers like CoreWeave.

The debt side of the AI buildout is where the signal is now moving: which chips get financed, who holds the paper, who takes the first loss. Our AI infrastructure tracker logged 459 stories in the last 90 days.