Stargate financing lines up $16.3B for Michigan AI data‑centre campus

Related Digital has lined up about $16.3 billion to finance Oracle’s planned Michigan data-center campus, a Stargate site intended to supply computing power for OpenAI. (datacenterdynamics.com) (thenextweb.com) The project is in Saline Township, near Ann Arbor, and OpenAI, Oracle, and Related Digital said in October 2025 that the campus would deliver more than one gigawatt of capacity. Construction was expected to begin in early 2026. (openai.com) (economictimes.indiatimes.com) The financing became notable because traditional bank lenders were reluctant to hold debt tied to a project with a roughly 19.5-year maturity. PIMCO stepped in as the largest buyer, with reports putting its commitment at about $10 billion. (thenextweb.com) (finance.yahoo.com) That structure turns an AI buildout story into a credit-market story. The question is no longer only how many chips Oracle and OpenAI need, but which investors will fund data centers that can take decades to pay back. (thenextweb.com) (finance.yahoo.com) The Michigan site is one piece of a much larger Stargate buildout. OpenAI said in October that its partnership with Oracle would add 4.5 gigawatts of capacity, lifting Stargate’s planned total to more than 8 gigawatts and more than $450 billion of investment over three years. (openai.com) OpenAI also said the Michigan campus would create more than 2,500 union construction jobs and use a closed-loop cooling system to reduce water consumption. DTE Energy was named as the utility provider, using existing excess transmission capacity. (openai.com) The site had already become a test of whether Oracle could keep raising capital for its OpenAI commitments after Blue Owl Capital declined to fund the project in December. Blackstone was later reported to have provided nearly $2 billion, below earlier expectations. (datacenterdynamics.com) Local politics have also shadowed the build. Data Center Dynamics reported that opposition in Saline Township led to a lawsuit, which has since been settled, even as vertical construction of the campus moved ahead. (datacenterdynamics.com) The result is a data center that looks less like a standard real-estate project and more like a long-dated infrastructure bond deal wrapped around artificial-intelligence demand. If that financing holds, it gives Oracle and OpenAI a template for the next wave of Stargate campuses. (thenextweb.com) (openai.com)