Securitisation, a financing tool for data centers

Data centres in the US are funded through securitisation, a trend which will develop in Europe.

The development of data centers has grown remarkably in recent years, mainly due to the increasingly intensive use of the Cloud, and the development of generative AI.

The United States had about 60% of the world’s installed data center infrastructure in 2025, reflecting the presence on American soil of the world’s largest hyperscalers: Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle. The economic and regulatory environment is generally favourable, recently boosted by President Trump’s Stargate initiative, which aims to invest a minimum of $500 billion in AI data centre infrastructure over a four-year period. The top six hyperscalers are expected to spend between $400 billion and $600 billion annually by 2029.

In this context, securitisation is playing an increasing role in the financing of data centers across the Atlantic. It is particularly suited to their financing once the construction phase is completed, i.e. when they start to generate stable and predictable cash flows. In the construction phase, a mix of equity and bank loans is generally more efficient, but securitisation effectively takes over at the end of the works (or a few months before) and allows the repayment of bank loans, thus freeing up liquidity in the market. In 2025, 11.5 billion of ABS and more than 7 billion of CMBS were issued.

There are two types of structure: the direct securitisation of leasing cash flows (Asset Backed Security), and that of loans made to data centre operators, pledged on the data centres themselves (Commercial Mortgage Backed Security). The financing rate is typically 70%, with the remaining 30% covering the risks inherent in the operations. For the assessment of these risks, the quality of the tenants and the conditions of their leases, the experience of the operators, but also technological obsolescence and environmental challenges related to data centers (access to a sufficient electricity network and availability of water for cooling for example) are taken into account.

Europe is not as mature as the United States, but it is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Two transactions have been completed so far. One of them is the securitisation of two data centers in Cardiff, the other, the securitisation of four data centers in Berlin and Frankfurt. In both cases, the issuer is Vantage Data Centers, which were pioneers in Europe in 2024, with a GBP600m issuance of “green” ABS rated A- by S&P.

In France, the government has announced an investment of EUR109bn in data centres, in addition to the EUR45bn promised by Japan’s Softbank at the Choose France summit in 2026. In 2025, data centres have concentrated EUR67bn of investment. It is very likely, once enough centres are in operation, that a significant potential for securitisation will emerge.

Over the past two and a half years, Accola has advised five large corporates on the establishment or the renewal of their securitisation programmes, representing more than EUR2bn. We stand ready to take our part in the financing of the emerging data centre network.