CoreWeave’s B+ rating leads to Blue Owl’s failed $4bn data center financing

SelfRugger

2026-02-21 10:58:20

CoreWeave’s B+ rating leads to Blue Owl’s failed $4bn data center financing

Investing.com

Sat, February 21, 2026 at 1:49 PM GMT+9 2 min read

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Investing.com – CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) stock plunged over 8% after news broke that Blue Owl Capital (NYSE: OWL) had failed to raise $4 billion from lenders to fund the buildout of a data center in Pennsylvania. The project located in Lancaster is supposed to host CoreWeave, an AI cloud provider, as its main tenant.

Blue Owl was unable to convince lenders to fund the multi-billion-dollar project largely due to CoreWeave’s debt rating. Some of the specialty lenders in the AI infrastructure sector gave the deal a hard pass for this reason.

The “junk” credit hurdle

Despite its rapid expansion and strategic backing from Nvidia (NVDA), CoreWeave carries a B+ “junk” rating from S&P Global. “We saw it. We passed,” one senior executive at a large specialty lender told Business Insider, citing growing caution among institutional investors regarding massive exposures to AI players with less-than-sterling credit.

The situation marks a stark contrast to Blue Owl’s previous successes, such as its partnership with Meta (META), where it leveraged Meta’s investment-grade status to raise over $27 billion in bonds.

Bridge financing vs. long-term debt

While a spokesman for Blue Owl insisted the project is “fully funded, on time, and on budget,” the firm later disclosed an obligation of roughly $500 million in bridge financing due in March 2026.

If Blue Owl cannot find permanent debt partners by then, the firm could be forced to use its own balance sheet to fund the multi-billion-dollar construction. BMO Capital Markets analyst Brennan Hawken noted that a struggle to find debt financing at this stage is a “red flag” that warrants deeper investigation by investors.

Are lenders backing off on AI infrastructure?

The difficulty in bankrolling the Lancaster project follows reports that banks also struggled to offload $38 billion in debt for an Oracle (ORCL) data center campus. These developments suggest a widening gap between the AI “hype” and the “credit reality” of the underlying infrastructure:

Rising leverage: Companies like CoreWeave are taking on billions in high-interest debt to fuel growth.

Lender fatigue: Institutional lenders are increasingly wary of "hyperscale" projects that lack a guarantee from an investment-grade tenant.

Alternative solutions: Blue Owl may be forced to seek "credit support" from Nvidia or pool together a loan from its own private credit clients to keep the project alive.

As the March 2026 bridge loan deadline approaches, the market will be watching to see if Blue Owl can architect a creative solution, or if it will be left holding the bag on a $4 billion construction bill.

Story continues

CoreWeave’s B+ rating leads to Blue Owl’s failed $4bn data center financing

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