The Firm represented Blackstone in connection with the financing of Related Digital’s $16 billion data center campus in Saline Township, Michigan, purpose-built for Oracle. The financing includes equity from Related Digital and funds affiliated with Blackstone, and fixed-rate, long term debt financing anchored by PIMCO-managed funds and accounts.
The Saline Township campus — known as “The Barn” for the historic red barn preserved at the project’s entrance along Michigan Avenue — comprises three single-story data center buildings with more than a gigawatt of capacity. The project is being developed for Oracle as part of its partnership with OpenAI to expand AI compute capacity across the country.
The closing of the financing is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
The Simpson Thacher team was led by Sam Rudik, Scott Kobak, Jon Ozner, Sam Saunders and Ignacio Perez, members of the Firm’s market-leading Digital Infrastructure and Data Center group, and also included Avi Kaye, Matt Kut, Will Brown, Justin Mathew, Abigail Drucker and Caitlin O’Flanagan (Real Estate); Brian Chisling, Javad Asghari, Andrew Maryan, Chelsey Schroeter, James Hodgson and Jason Chukwuma (Energy and Infrastructure); Michael Chao (M&A); Katie Byun and Yuki Zhang (Capital Markets); John Anselmi, Cem Islikci, David Kim and Ariel Zaghi (Banking and Credit); Nancy Mehlman and Ruoxi Zhang (Tax); Erica Rozow and Alex Kharash (ERISA); Nathan Utterback (Derivatives); Toby Chun and Logan Lineberry (Environmental).