Anthropic Lines Up $60B Chip Financing, Offering Blackstone a 10% Coupon on Junior Debt

Anthropic is putting together a proposed $60 billion financing to pay for AI chips, according to the Financial Times, as relayed by Investing.com and by posts circulating on social media. The structure has two layers: about $42 billion of senior debt guaranteed by Broadcom, and an $18 billion junior tranche. Blackstone-managed funds are expected to invest $9 billion, half of the junior piece, at a 10% coupon, with total returns above that level after fees and discounts. The other $9 billion is aimed at a broader set of investors, potentially at a lower yield. The package is expected to be the largest chip financing arrangement to date, with drawdown expected in 2027.

The pricing is the story for credit markets. A rating from KBRA of BB+, one notch below investment grade, surfaced on Thursday. It was assigned in June in connection with an earlier $35 billion chip financing with Apollo and Blackstone, whose senior tranches priced at 5.75% with a Broadcom residual-value guarantee and whose junior piece of about $4.4 billion carried 8.5%. The FT reported that the new junior debt is expected to receive a similar assessment. Startup Fortune noted that similarly rated borrowers typically pay about 7%, so a 10% coupon signals how much extra lenders want for AI compute exposure.

The Broadcom piece connects to commitments Anthropic disclosed earlier this month. Its IPO prospectus, reported by Reuters on October 1, described Broadcom lending up to $42 billion through convertible notes to cover about a third of a $125.2 billion, five-year commitment to lease Google TPUs. Whether that facility and the senior layer of the new package are the same money has not been spelled out in the reporting.

What to watch: final terms and demand for the second $9 billion of junior debt, whether the new tranche is rated, and how the debt load is presented as Anthropic moves toward its planned November listing. Broadcom's AVGO role as guarantor ties part of its balance sheet to Anthropic's compute spending, and GOOGL is the counterparty on the TPU lease.