- Morgan Stanley is leading a $15 billion financing package — a $14 billion bridge loan plus a revolving credit facility — for Nexus Data Centers to build an Anthropic AI campus in Hubbard, Texas [1] - Google is backstopping the deal with guarantees covering billions of dollars of Anthropic's lease and power-payment obligations, and will receive approximately 20% equity in the project [2] - The campus will include a 1.6-gigawatt natural gas power plant and deploy tensor processing units co-designed by Google and Broadcom [2] - Anthropic has signed more than a dozen preliminary lease agreements targeting at least 10 gigawatts of total data center capacity as it shifts toward directly controlling its own infrastructure
[3] Nexus Data Centers is in advanced talks to close $15 billion in financing led by Morgan Stanley to build a sprawling artificial intelligence data center campus in Hubbard, Texas, that will serve Anthropic, according to reports from CNBC, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal [1][4] [5]. The package consists of a $14 billion bridge loan and a revolving credit facility, making it one of the largest single AI infrastructure financing deals assembled to date.
Google, Anthropic's largest backer, is playing a central role in making the deal possible. The search giant has agreed to guarantee billions of dollars of Anthropic's lease and power-payment commitments should the AI startup default, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the WSJ [2]. In exchange, Google will receive approximately 20% equity ownership in the data center and power project
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[2]The Hubbard campus will include a natural gas-fired power plant capable of generating 1.6 gigawatts of electricity, providing dedicated behind-the-meter power for the facility [2]. Anthropic plans to equip the site with tensor processing units co-designed by Google and Broadcom, with a separate vendor financing agreement between Anthropic and Broadcom covering the chip costs
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[2]## The Deal The $15 billion financing package is structured as a $14 billion bridge loan alongside a revolving credit facility, with Morgan Stanley serving as lead arranger [1]. The bridge loan is designed to fund the construction of the Hubbard, Texas campus, which sits on a roughly 2,000-acre site that Nexus had previously proposed for a 600-megawatt data center development
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[6]Google's guarantees cover four data center leases signed by Anthropic and related power-purchase agreements for the on-site generation facility [2]. The arrangement effectively leverages Google's investment-grade credit rating to unlock bank lending at a scale that would be difficult for a startup like Anthropic or a smaller developer like Nexus to secure independently.
Anthropic, Google, and Morgan Stanley did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters at the time the reports were published [5].
Why Google Is Backstopping Anthropic's Infrastructure #
Google's willingness to guarantee billions of dollars in obligations reflects the deepening financial entanglement between the two companies. Anthropic has previously signed a reported $200 billion compute agreement with Google, and the two companies have co-developed infrastructure strategies around Google's tensor processing units [3].
By taking a 20% equity stake in the physical project, Google also gains a direct ownership interest in the underlying real estate and power assets — a hedge that goes beyond its existing cloud-customer relationship with Anthropic [2]. Broadcom, which co-designs Google's TPUs, is separately providing vendor financing for the chips that will be deployed at the site
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[2]## Anthropic's Direct-Leasing Push The Nexus deal is part of a broader strategic shift by Anthropic to lease data centers directly rather than renting server capacity exclusively through cloud providers. The company has signed more than a dozen preliminary lease agreements with U.S. developers, targeting at least 10 gigawatts of total capacity in coming years [3].
To execute this strategy, Anthropic has recruited data center veterans including Tim Hughes from Stack Infrastructure and Brett Rogers, who spent six years building data centers at Google [7]. The company is also working with Fluidstack as part of the Broadcom, Apollo, and Blackstone 20-gigawatt XPU platform
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[8]The move toward a hybrid model — controlling its own physical infrastructure while continuing to use cloud partners for elastic capacity — mirrors a path taken by other large AI labs seeking to reduce dependency on a small number of cloud providers.
Nexus Data Centers #
Nexus Data Centers is a privately held hyperscale data center developer headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas. The company specializes in purpose-built, large-scale AI campuses designed around integrated behind-the-meter power generation, carrier-neutral fiber, and sustainable water infrastructure [6].
In December 2025, Nexus received a strategic equity investment from Transition Equity Partners to accelerate the development of gigawatt-scale campuses across the United States [9]. CEO Ivan Van der Walt, who has a background in the energy industry, has positioned the company around a sovereign-power strategy targeting compute-intensive AI workloads
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[6]## What's Next The deal was reported to be in its final stages as of July 30, with an announcement possible imminently [2]. If completed at the reported $15 billion scale, it would rank among the largest project-finance transactions in the data center sector, underscoring how Wall Street is mobilizing capital to meet the infrastructure demands of the AI buildout.
The financing also highlights the growing role of traditional banks in AI infrastructure. Morgan Stanley's lead role positions the firm at the center of a market where project-finance lending for data centers and power assets has surged alongside demand from AI model developers.
Companies mentioned #
Further sources #
[1] CNBC: Nexus Data Centers in advanced talks to secure $15B for Google-backed Ant… ↗
[2] Yahoo Finance / WSJ: Banks in talks to lend $15 billion for Anthropic data cent… ↗ [3] Data Center Dynamics: Anthropic signs more than a dozen letters of intent for d… ↗
[[4] Bloomberg: Banks Line Up $15 Billion of Debt for Anthropic With Google Aid ↗](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-30/banks-line-up-15-billion-of-debt-for-anthropic-with-google-aid)
[[5] Yahoo Finance / Reuters: Google reportedly backs $15B data center loan for Anth… ↗](https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/google-reportedly-backs-15b-data-190605629.html)
[6] Data Center Dynamics: 600MW natural gas-powered data center campus proposed in … ↗+3 more
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