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Jessica Naylor

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Jessica Naylor was among the first in finance to see data centers as a lending opportunity — before AI made them the hottest real asset class on the planet. As a VP at HPS Investment Partners (acquired by BlackRock for $12 billion), she helped build a lending practice from scratch that expanded from fund manager financing into esoteric assets like media rights and, crucially, data center infrastructure. Naylor joined Citigroup in 2016 after graduating from Colgate and quickly demonstrated the kind of initiative that accelerates careers. When a senior salesman covering a major asset manager left unexpectedly, Naylor — lacking experience but not preparation — studied the client's portfolio, grilled traders for insights, and improved Citi's relationship with the account enough to keep it permanently. It was, by her own account, the turning point. She led her team at Citi from 2020, growing it into a practice that financed fund managers and lent against unconventional collateral. By the time she left for HPS in 2024, the team was actively financing data centers — a prescient bet given the subsequent explosion in AI-driven demand for compute infrastructure. The move to HPS, which was subsequently acquired by BlackRock in a $12.5 billion deal, gave Naylor even more firepower to deploy into the private credit opportunities she'd identified early. The intersection of private credit and data center financing is now one of the most competitive spaces in finance, with every major firm scrambling to build capabilities. Naylor was there before the crowd. With minimal public presence — no Twitter, no Substack, limited LinkedIn visibility — Naylor exemplifies the under-the-radar operator. Her work happens in the plumbing of the financial system: structuring credit facilities, underwriting esoteric assets, and building lending practices that didn't exist five years ago. It's not glamorous, but it's where the infrastructure of the AI economy is being financed.

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