JPMorgan Chase & Co. has started preliminary outreach to prospective lenders for a $5 billion debt facility intended to finance Volta Infra Holdings Ltd.'s rollout of data centers tailored to artificial intelligence workloads, according to people familiar with the financing.
Those people said the bank, which is leading the transaction, has been holding early conversations to determine lender appetite for participating in the debt. The discussions are at an initial stage and are focused on gauging interest rather than firm commitments, the sources said.
Volta, a newly formed firm led by Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio, secured $300 million in venture capital earlier this month, a round that establishes a $2.4 billion valuation for the company. That funding is intended to help a broad set of technology companies, from well-resourced AI labs to smaller startups, gain access to high-cost AI accelerators.
The company was founded earlier this year by Boada and Gumuzio, both former executives from Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.'s infrastructure business. Volta's stated objective is to simplify how leading AI developers and emerging firms procure and deploy Nvidia Corp.'s advanced chips by providing the underlying data center capacity and commercial arrangements.
In related commercial activity, Volta has entered into a substantial agreement to supply computing capacity worth $10 billion to Anthropic PBC. Under that arrangement, Anthropic has contracted to use a data center that will be managed by Volta and delivered in partnership with Bitdeer Technologies Group, with the site located in Norway.
This financing outreach by JPMorgan comes on the heels of Volta's recent venture equity infusion and the large capacity contract with Anthropic. The bank's early-stage lender conversations are aimed at assembling debt to fund construction and operating arrangements for AI-specific facilities, though the precise structure and timing of any final loan package remain subject to lender interest and further negotiation.
Volta's model, as described in the disclosures about its funding and commercial agreements, centers on providing access to costly AI chips through dedicated data center infrastructure and third-party delivery partnerships. The $5 billion debt package under consideration would be intended to underwrite the capital expenditures and buildout needed to deliver that capacity at scale.
As a next step, the parties involved will continue to test the market for lender participation and refine the financing terms in line with investor feedback. Additional details about pricing, syndication or closing timeline have not been disclosed by the parties involved.