The U.S. Department of Defense is negotiating a loan of roughly $5 billion to Fluidstack, an AI cloud-computing startup, the Wall Street Journal reported on September 10, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. The money would reportedly come from the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital and, if finalized, would be the largest loan the office has ever made.
The funding is intended to shore up the U.S. supply chain and manufacturing capacity for data-center components rather than to bankroll a new AI facility outright, positioning the government as a direct source of capital for the fast-growing AI infrastructure industry. The talks follow an executive order signed last month that declared a national emergency over the U.S. electricity grid and restricted the use of certain foreign equipment in it, a rule that directly affects data centers.
Fluidstack, which builds and operates GPU data centers for AI companies, had already secured $830 million and a separate $1.5 billion funding round led by Jane Street, valuing the startup at $18 billion. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the WSJ report.