Dutch lender ING is putting about $500 million of data-centre loans up for sale in a single portfolio, in what is reported to be one of the first auctions devoted entirely to debt tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The portfolio covers about a dozen loans, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The loans are being offered through a bids-wanted-in-competition process, a competitive auction in which investors submit binding offers for pieces of the package. Bids of at least $10 million are due by 19 November.

The best-known loan in the package is a $25 million slice tied to a large data centre in New Mexico that forms part of Stargate, the AI infrastructure venture backed by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. The portfolio also includes debt linked to data-centre operators Vantage Data Centers and CyrusOne.

ING declined to comment when contacted by Reuters, so the bank has not confirmed the sale or explained its reasons for it. The report did not disclose any indicative prices or discounts on the debt, which means investors cannot yet tell whether the auction reflects routine portfolio management or a more urgent effort to reduce exposure.

The sale comes after a sharp sell-off in technology shares. Chipmakers and so-called neocloud companies were hit particularly hard after the Democrats swept the US midterm elections, raising fears of tougher regulation of the technology sector. The sell-off erased $3 trillion in market value from S&P 500 companies, while data-centre operators Applied Digital, Cipher Digital and IREN each fell by more than 14%.

The Stargate connection makes the offering especially sensitive. In September, Oracle sent the developer of the New Mexico site a force-majeure notice over potential delays in securing power for the project, known as Project Jupiter. Oracle said at the time that the project remained on schedule, and the developer said the notice did not alter its financial commitments. A contractual warning about possible delays is not the same as a withdrawal by the tenant, and the site is one part of a much larger infrastructure programme.

For lenders, the auction is a test of appetite. Banks routinely distribute loans to other investors, including asset managers, insurers and private-credit funds, and selling an interest transfers some of the lender's exposure. By itself, a sale does not establish that a borrower has defaulted, that construction has stopped, or that a bank is accepting a loss.

Hank Calenti, a global markets strategist at SMBC, told CNBC that a seller must weigh any discount against the capital a transaction frees up. Until bids are accepted, there is no price to judge the portfolio by, and no way to know how much of it ING will ultimately transfer.

The 19 November deadline should therefore give a clearer signal than the decision to seek buyers alone. The price investors are willing to pay, the amount ING transfers and any terms attached to a deal will show how much appetite remains for financing the next phase of the AI build-out, and at what cost. For European banks that have lent heavily into data centres and power-hungry computing, the result will be watched closely.