No storyline this week. Just the numbers on a market I have watched grow up.
Data center asset-backed securities have grown from $4 billion outstanding in 2020 to $61 billion year-to-date in 2026, per Barclays Research. The sector is now roughly 12% of the esoteric ABS market, up from 3% in 2020. Brokerage forecasts put 2026 issuance around $50 billion.
Some history. Issuers have used ABS structures for data centers since 2018, and CMBS single-borrower structures since 2021. Through mid-2025, the two formats combined for about $48.7 billion across 88 US transactions. ABS took roughly 71% of that volume across 75 deals, averaging near $460 million per deal. CMBS made up the rest at a larger average size, around $1.1 billion. European issuance showed up in 2024, first UK collateral, then German.
What the deals look like. Almost all of it is backed by built, stabilized, cash-flowing assets. Long leases. Little or no construction or lease-up risk. Sabey has been the most active issuer historically. The recent tape gives you the current market:
Aligned priced $1.1 billion in June, backed by real property interests in four data centers across Illinois, Texas, and Virginia. Five-year anticipated maturity, thirty-year legal.
Flexential is in market for $1.4 billion, backed by 28 sites across 13 states.
Compass raised $830 million against six hyperscale facilities in Phoenix and Toronto. The portfolio appraised at $3.6 billion, fully leased to four investment-grade tenants. Moody’s put AAA and AA on the senior classes.
DataBank priced its fifth issuance in January. Like most repeat issuers here, it runs a master trust. All series share one collateral pool that grows with each deal.
How they get rated. Moody’s published its data center securitization methodology in February 2025. Higher ratings generally go to newer facilities in primary markets with long leases, strong overcollateralization, and first mortgage liens held in the trust. Fitch put out an exposure draft in July 2025 asking whether its CMBS large loan criteria should apply to these deals, how relevant residual values are to an ABS-style transaction, and whether anticipated repayment date structures should support higher leverage. KBRA has a primer comparing the two approaches. Worth noting the criteria are still being written while the market grows fifteen-fold.
A few structural features worth knowing if you are new to these. The anticipated repayment date is standard. The deal is expected to refinance at year five but does not legally mature for decades. Master trusts permit collateral substitution over time. In the Aligned deal, three of the seven previous data centers were removed from the trust, which took about $1 billion off the appraised value. And the tenant rosters are short. Most deals lease to a handful of large technology companies, the same names that anchor the rest of the market.
I spent a good part of my career in structured finance. If you want the full treatment of how these structures work, from the trust mechanics to the rating approaches to what actually happens at the ARD, I wrote a book on it: Data Center Financing and Securitization: A Comprehensive Investment Guide to the Digital Infrastructure Market, part of The Data Center Capital Series, on Amazon.
That is the market as it stands. Fifteen times larger than six years ago, still concentrated in stabilized assets and a short list of tenants, with rating criteria being refined as the volume scales.