Apollo, Blackstone Finalize $35 Billion Anthropic Chip Financing as AI Credit Boom Deepens
Updated
Updated · Financial Times · Jun 8
Apollo, Blackstone Finalize $35 Billion Anthropic Chip Financing as AI Credit Boom Deepens
2 articles · Updated · Financial Times · Jun 8
Summary
$35 billion of private credit was finalized by Apollo and Blackstone to fund Anthropic’s purchase of Alphabet-developed chips and broader expansion, making it one of the largest private credit deals completed.
Three debt tranches underpin the structure: $6 billion of A1 notes sold to banks at 1 percentage point over Treasuries, $24 billion placed with asset-backed investors at 5.75%, and $4.5 billion of junior debt at 8.5%.
Broadcom backstopped interest payments on the two senior tranches, sharply lowering borrowing costs because it makes the TPUs with Google; the financing was raised through an Apollo Atlas SP special-purpose vehicle backed by chip lease agreements.
Some investors passed because the delayed-draw format reduced yields and they were not given early access to Anthropic financials ahead of its planned IPO, even as Broadcom said the deal could be the first of many similar financings.
The transaction lands amid a wider AI funding surge and overheating concerns, days after Alphabet’s $85 billion equity raise and as chip-backed lending fuels debate over how fast AI hardware could depreciate.
As private credit finances the AI boom, could this $35B deal hide the next big systemic financial risk?
Is Anthropic's massive TPU purchase the tipping point in the war between custom AI chips and NVIDIA's GPUs?
Anthropic’s $35 Billion Chip Financing: Reshaping AI Infrastructure, Private Credit, and the Compute Arms Race
Overview
Anthropic has secured a groundbreaking $35 billion private loan package, backed by Broadcom, to fund its acquisition of specialized Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). This financing marks a new era in AI infrastructure, highlighting the crucial role of hardware providers like Broadcom in enabling advanced AI development. The loan is structured to support Anthropic’s need for massive computational power, essential for frontier AI labs. Broadcom’s active involvement in developing TPUs with Google further strengthens this partnership, setting a precedent for future large-scale investments in AI hardware and accelerating the growth of the AI infrastructure market.