In a Quartz report on Asia's debt-fueled AI infrastructure boom, Columbia Business School Professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh's research helps show how much borrowing is behind data center growth. In work for the Brookings Institution, Van Nieuwerburgh estimates that about $1.4 trillion of debt has gone into financing data centers, and that banks hold roughly half of it. The article covers Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group's push for a three-year syndicated loan of up to $1.2 billion, citing Bloomberg. The money would fund a 198.8-megawatt data center campus in Johor, Malaysia, and refinance existing debt. HSBC, Maybank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, and UOB are leading the deal. Earlier this year the company raised about $856 million for data centers in Indonesia, and it has set a $5 billion debt target for regional expansion.
