Financing GPUs like aircraft
What 40 years of aircraft and project finance teach lenders about chips with a six-year life: security, remarketing, residual value and step-in.
ABOUT THE EDITOR LONDON, UK
Randeep
Bubbra.
Making the next generation
of infrastructure financeable.
Partner, Assets & Structured Finance
Watson Farley & Williams
ASSETS. CONTRACTS. CAPITAL.RB / 01
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICEFinancing assets that matter
INDUSTRY CONVERSATIONSData centres, GPUs, connectivity & capital
RECOGNITIONAirline Economics · 40 Under 40, 2025 ↗01 / THE PERSPECTIVE
Different assets.
Connected questions.
Aircraft, satellites and data centres each depend on long-lived assets, complex contracts and capital that needs to be repaid.
The point of connection is the financing: who carries the risk, where the cash comes from and what happens when the original plan changes.
DATA CENTRES
When does the building become a bankable asset?
Completion, power availability and the customer contract have to work together before the financing can work.
Explore construction finance ↗Professional background: WFW public profile ↗
02 / FOLLOW THE FINANCING
A physical asset.
A chain of obligations.
Choose a layer to see the question behind it. The structure matters as much as the headline amount.
CONTRACTS & CASH FLOW
Who pays — and for how long?
A long-term customer contract can support borrowing. Its termination rights, renewal terms and credit support determine how much certainty it actually provides.
Explore contract renewal →03 / INSIDE THE FINANCING
The detail
changes the story.
Three terms. One financing.
Select a highlighted clause to read the question it raises.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Not an actual transaction or legal advice.
IC / RESEARCH NOTEEXAMPLE 001
A compute financing,
read between the lines.
BorrowerExample Compute SPV
THE RENEWAL QUESTION
The contract ends before the loan.
Repayment in the final year needs another source of cash. Renewal, a new customer, reserves or asset-sale proceeds each carry different assumptions.
Customer contract4 years
Debt term5 years
A question to investigate, rather than a conclusion about any covered financing.
04 / THE PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
Experience behind
the questions.
Selected public credentials. The research register is separate from professional transaction experience.
01 / DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTUREGPU financings across
Experience on both
Experience across sectors
Data centre financings globally, including across the US, UK, Europe, the Nordics, the Middle East and Asia.
Public profile includes development finance and an AI-related refurbishment and power-generation overhaul.
↗02 / DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTUREGPU financings across
the US, Europe and Asia.
Financing GPUs and AI-related infrastructure across a range of financing structures, including the capital markets.
↗03 / FINANCING PERSPECTIVEExperience on both
sides of the table.
Experience at HSBC and Goldman Sachs, including leveraged acquisition finance.
↗04 / SECTORSExperience across sectors
and capex-intensive assets.
Financings across infrastructure, including space, defence and TMT.
↗WHY INFRACOMPUTE
Look past the headline.
Read the structure.
InfraCompute brings public financing disclosures into one place, connects the terms to the assets and makes the unanswered questions visible.
A place to explore how infrastructure becomes financeable, and what lenders and investors need to understand along the way.
Randeep Bubbra05 / CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Start with
a better question.
Speaking
Talks Randeep gives
Randeep speaks to lenders, investors, operators and in-house teams about how AI infrastructure gets financed. Each talk uses the deal data on InfraCompute and can be tailored to the audience.
What is market in AI infrastructure credit
Margins, DSCR levels, cash traps and tenors across the public GPU and data centre deals, and what moves them.
From hyperscaler contract to rated debt
How take-or-pay customer contracts, direct agreements and reserves turn a neocloud SPV into investment-grade paper.
Taking security over compute across borders
Perfecting security over GPUs and data centre assets in the UK, Europe, the US, the Gulf, Asia and Australia.
Data centre ABS and the refinancing wall
How securitisations, construction loans and GPU facilities roll over, and what lenders watch at maturity.
Space and defence infrastructure finance
ECA, DFI and project finance structures for satellite constellations and defence assets.
KeynotePanelModeratorClient training or CPDPodcast or webinar
Media kit
For organisers and journalists
Short bio (50 words)
Randeep Bubbra is a partner in Watson Farley & Williams' assets and structured finance group in London. He advises financiers, sponsors and developers on data centres, digital infrastructure, space and aerospace and defence assets, and writes InfraCompute, public-source research on AI infrastructure finance.
Byline and credit
- Name
- Randeep Bubbra
- Line
- Lawyer | Making the next generation of infrastructure financeable
- Profile
- Firm profile
- Headshot
- On request via the contact page
Full bio (about 150 words)
Randeep Bubbra is a partner in Watson Farley & Williams' assets and structured finance group in London. He advises financiers, sponsors, developers and other parties on financing data centres and digital infrastructure, and on aerospace and defence assets, across project finance, leveraged acquisition finance, ECA-backed debt, sale and leasebacks and capital markets products. His work includes data centre financings in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, the US$4bn OneWeb satellite project financing, the US$1.2bn O3b financing, the first euro-denominated ECA bond for ATR aircraft and AviLease's US$3.6bn acquisition of Standard Chartered's aviation leasing platform. He chairs WFW's data centre roundtable series, moderated a panel at TXF Global 2025 and was named in Airline Economics' 40 Under 40 in 2025. He completed secondments at HSBC and Goldman Sachs and holds an LLB from the University of Leeds. Through InfraCompute he publishes public-source research on what is market in AI infrastructure credit. Views expressed on InfraCompute are his own.
Can comment on
GPU-backed lending and neocloud financing; data centre construction and acquisition finance; data centre ABS; hyperscaler offtake and step-in; security over compute assets across jurisdictions; space and satellite finance; ECA-backed aviation and defence finance. Comment is on public deals and market structure only.
THE INFRA NETWORK
Two sister sites.
The same method.
InfraDefence and InfraOrbit apply the InfraCompute method to defence and space: every financing, acquisition and investment since 2015, read from the issuer's own documents, with the same Weekly briefing.
InfraDefence: defence finance ↗InfraOrbit: space finance ↗SPEAKING · MEDIA · RESEARCH
Let’s talk about
the financing.
For industry discussions, editorial questions or speaking enquiries.
Get in touch ↗Read InfraCompute Weekly ↗