Chase & Co. is pitching a yield of about 11% on a $5 billion leveraged-loan sale on behalf of Volta Infrastructure Holdings Ltd., one of the highest borrowing costs seen in the market for risky debt that’s become popular for financing the AI boom.

The loan transaction for the new artificial intelligence cloud company is being marketed in the range of 6.25 to 6.5 percentage points above the benchmark rate, and a discounted price of 97 to 98 cents on the dollar, according to a person familiar with knowledge of the matter. That equates to a yield of roughly 11% at current benchmark levels, according to a Bloomberg calculation.

Purchasing the specialized chips needed to run AI models is an expensive endeavor. Companies backed by investment-grade firms can tap the high-grade markets and achieve lower borrowing costs, such as the $35 billion debt package backstopped by Broadcom Inc. used to help Anthropic PBC access tensor processing units, or TPUs, an AI chip developed by Broadcom and Alphabet Inc. But smaller, riskier companies without such partners, especially so-called neoclouds that rent access to chips and other AI infrastructure, are instead turning to the more expensive leveraged loan market.

A string of deals by CoreWeave Inc., Lambda Inc. and Crusoe Inc. have proven that these lenders are happy to finance such purchases. But those earlier transactions came at lower borrowing costs.

The Volta deal, which is more than just a chip loan and also includes debt to support a data center, marks a new high in terms of all-in yield. Representatives for Volta and JPMorgan, which is leading the transaction, declined to comment. The transaction will be used to finance a data center complex in Norway that will be managed by Volta Infrastructure in partnership with Bitdeer Technologies Group, and Anthropic has already signed a six-year agreement for compute capacity at the site, according to people familiar with the matter.

Volta was founded earlier this year by Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio, two former executives from Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.’s infrastructure business.

Bitdeer is a Bitcoin miner that operates data centers. Wall Street is throwing its weight behind an AI buildout expected to cost nearly $5 trillion by the end of 2030. Companies have borrowed roughly $625 billion over the past two years for data centers and other AI investments, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.

Notably the transaction is unrated, one of the people added, asking not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. That’s unusual in the leveraged loan market and typically prevents collateralized loan obligations — the biggest buyers of this type of debt — from purchasing the loans.

The debt package is split into two tranches and is being borrowed by a special corporate entity named Volta Tydal Holdings S.à r.l. A $3.7 billion chip loan will be used to purchase about 36,000 graphics processing units, or GPUs, made by Nvidia Corp., according to the people.

A $1.3 billion loan will cash collateralize a letter of credit for a data center lease, meaning the money will be held in an account and used to make lease payments to Bitdeer to use the data center, the people said. The deal is structured as a “strip,” one of the people added, which means lenders have to buy a portion of both tranches to be able to participate.

The debt fully amortizes, meaning the loans will be paid down over time, a common feature in AI financing but unusual for corporate debt where the principal typically comes due at maturity. A lender call for the loan was held at 11 a.m.

New York time on Monday, one of the people said. Commitments are due Oct. 14. JPMorgan had begun sounding out investors on the loan in August, Bloomberg reported at the time.