IFC backs YCO Cloud with $170M debt for Philippine data center push

What's the deal? The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has approved up to $170 million in debt financing for YCO Global Cloud Centers HoldingsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (YCO CloudDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →), a Philippine data center developer. The package supports the YCO Catalyst Project, which carries an estimated total cost of $1.054 billion.

The breakdown: The financing consists of a mezzanine loan of up to $20 million to YCO Cloud, plus senior A loans of up to $150 million — or the Philippine peso equivalent — to special purpose project companies owned by the platform. The money will fund the development of YCO Cloud's data center platform in the country.

Why now? The IFC, the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, is moving to meet rising demand for data center capacity in the Philippines. The World Bank board approved the financing on July 28 on an absence-of-objection basis, with executive director Robert Bruce Nicholl and alternate executive director Sandro Maluck abstaining.

The approval confirms a Manila Bulletin report from May that the IFC was preparing the package.

By the numbers: The deal ranks in the 94th percentile among debt rounds for enterprise software companies in the Philippines, based on a sample of 142 deals. That places it among the largest such financings on record for the sector and region.

The signal: Development-finance capital is flowing into Southeast Asian digital infrastructure as cloud and AI workloads strain regional capacity. A billion-dollar project anchored by World Bank backing signals that the Philippines is becoming a serious contender in the data center buildout race.

Image credit: NeoSpire