Blue Owl JV Lands $7.1B for Data Center Project

A joint venture of Blue Owl Capital, Crusoe and Primary Digital Infrastructure has obtained $7.1 billion in construction financing for the second phase of its 1.2-gigawatt AI data center project in Abilene, Texas.

Newmark arranged the financing for the $15 billion development through a consortium led by JP Morgan. The companies will construct six new facilities, bringing the campus to eight buildings upon completion. The firms formed the partnership in October.

The joint venture broke ground on the first phase—two data centers with an initial capacity of more than 200 megawatts—last June and is set to be energized in the next months. At the beginning of this year, the venture obtained a $2.3 billion loan, also from JP Morgan, to capitalize it.

Oracle has already committed to the entire campus under a long-term lease, Data Center Dynamics reports, with occupancy scheduled to commence this year. The second phase of the project began this March and is set to be energized by mid-2026.

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The project is part of Lancium Clean Campus, a 1,100-acre site that was originally planned as a bitcoin mining facility. Now, it’s set to deliver 1,000 megawatts of power by year’s end, with another 1,000 megawatts underway. The site will also include 300 megawatts of on-site generation and support up to 100,000 GPUs on a unified network once fully operational.

Newmark Co-President of Global Debt & Structured Finance Jordan Roeschlaub, Vice Chairman Nick Scribani and Managing Director Ben Kroll arranged the loan, together with Head of Data Center Capital Markets Brent Mayo, Co-Head of U.S. Capital Markets Doug Harmon and Co-Head of Strategic Advisory Andrew Warin.

As of March, Blue Owl had $273 billion in assets under management. Earlier this month, the company closed Blue Owl Digital Infrastructure Fund III, its most recent digital infrastructure fund. The investment vehicle reached $7 billion of total capital commitments, surpassing the $4 billion initial target.

Data centers continue to attract investors

Despite ongoing power constraints, the data center industry is projected to keep growing, largely fueled by the rise of AI technologies. A JLL report forecasts that global data center energy demand will double to 100 gigawatts in the next five years.

Just this week, EdgeCore Digital acquired a 44-acre site in Mesa, Ariz., for the expansion of its data center campus. The project will span more than 3.1 million square feet and provide north of 450 megawatts of capacity at full build-out.