With demand for data centers at all-time highs, AI real estate deals are highly consequential for the industry. This week, Nexus Data Centers - an infrastructure provider based in Texas - is reportedly in advanced talks to secure loans to build a new campus in its home state, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The firm is reportedly seeking to borrow $15 billion from banks for the construction. This is an unusually significant amount for a comparatively unknown company, made possible because Google is signed on as a guarantor for the facility’s rent and energy payments. This backing allows Nexus - a relative newcomer headed by CEO Ivan Van der Walt, an energy industry professional - to approach lenders with greater leverage.
In return, Google will receive a 20% stake in the project, and the facility will be fitted out with its own proprietary AI chips rather than those of a competitor. This model represents an additional burden of risk for Google; however, it means that it is in effect bootstrapped demand for hundreds of thousands of chips.
The deal also includes Anthropic, which is signed on as the tenant. In April, Google and Broadcom expanded their compute agreement with Anthropic, aiming to provide around 3.5 GW of processing capacity from 2027 onwards. Google also reportedly holds a 14% stake in the firm.
On-site natural gas turbines will power the Anthropic campus
In December 2025, Nexus put in its first proposal for the 2,000-acre data center campus in Hubbard, Texas. This first filing stated that the site aimed to provide 612 MW of capacity, with the potential to scale up to 7.7 GW over time.
The energy source powering this growth will be gas turbines operated by Nexus, taking advantage of a major nearby pipeline. The existing natural gas facilities near the project have a reported capacity of 1.6 GW, equivalent to the consumption of around 1.3 million homes.
All of this is geared toward cementing Anthropic’s position as a leader of the domestic U.S. AI industry, one that has been under threat since the Department of War designated the firm a supply chain risk over a security guardrail dispute in March. Legal proceedings related to the designation are ongoing.
Regardless, the company reported strong growth in April, with annualized revenue surpassing $30 billion (versus just $9 billion at the end of 2025).
Google's disclosed lease guarantees have reached $44 billion
This is not the first time that Google has backed loan applications for data center builders. Recent financial filings show that it has in fact offered to provide a backstop for $44 billion in third-party lease payments (almost seven times as much as at the end of September 2025). As of yet, none of these facilities are complete.
The firm has identified this as a potential avenue to boost its market share, which sits at around 6-8% versus Nvidia’s 80-85%. Guaranteeing the lease and electricity payments on new data centers is therefore a way for Google to accelerate demand for its tensor processing units (TPUs) by backing facilities that may not have existed otherwise. In the ideal scenario, its liabilities will never be triggered, as the tenant companies will cover the lease and bills as normal.
However, the company’s biggest competitor has also launched similar initiatives. In July, Nvidia itself reportedly offered up to $250 billion in guarantees on the construction and lease costs for an OpenAI campus in Ohio.
Though Google executives have expressed confidence that these deals will yield greater TPU profits than any payouts on facility liabilities, they have still contributed to visible shifts on the balance sheet. Parent company Alphabet has reportedly grown its long-term debt to over $90 billion. In Q2 2026, its free cash flow also turned negative for the first time since its public listing in 2004.