U.S. Department of Defense Plans to Provide $5 Billion Loan to AI Infrastructure Startup Fluidstack

According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Department of Defense is negotiating a $5 billion (approximately 6.7 trillion South Korean won) loan with AI cloud platform startup Fluidstack, funded by the Department's Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), primarily to strengthen the domestic U.S. supply chain and manufacturing capabilities for critical data center components. If the agreement is reached, it would become OSC's largest single loan to date. Founded in 2017, Fluidstack relocated its headquarters to New York in December last year, currently employs 700 staff members all working in the United States, and has already signed multi-year data center leases in states including New York, Indiana, Louisiana, and Texas. Loan terms have not yet been finalized.