$36 billion! The largest private credit and chip financing deal in history—Anthropic accelerates purchases of Google TPUs

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Anthropic is accelerating the construction of its AI infrastructure with the help of an unprecedented private credit deal.

On May 28, Bloomberg cited sources saying that Anthropic, together with Apollo and Blackstone, launched an approximately $36 billion private credit transaction. The funds raised will be used to purchase Google’s custom chips, TPUs, which will then be leased to Anthropic for use.

Broadcom, which helped Google develop the chips, will provide guarantees for most of the funds in this transaction. This deal is expected to become one of the largest private credit transactions in history, as well as the largest chip financing debt deal to date.

After the news was released, Broadcom’s after-hours stock price rose more than 1% to $434.84, while Alphabet, Google’s parent company, experienced slight declines.

This equity financing pushes Anthropic’s valuation to $965 billion, surpassing its competitor OpenAI for the first time. The company is racing with OpenAI, aiming to complete its initial public offering later this year.

Broadcom Credit Endorsement, Anthropic Maintains Independence

Since Anthropic is still a startup and does not have the profitability to support such a large-scale debt, the core of this financing design lies in leveraging Broadcom’s strong creditworthiness.

According to reports, the transaction uses a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to borrow funds and accept equity investment. The funds are used to purchase TPU chips, which are then leased to Anthropic.

The repayment of the debt mainly relies on lease payments, supplemented by the long-term residual value of the chips. This structure allows both Broadcom and Anthropic to maintain independent relationships with the transaction and not appear directly as financing entities.

Anthropic plans to deploy these chips in New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana.

The debt uses a delayed draw format, which means funds can be drawn gradually as chips become available and leasing to Anthropic begins.

Debt Tranches, Tranche A Fully Protected by Broadcom

According to sources, the debt financing is divided into approximately $6 billion A1 notes, $25 billion A2 notes, and $4.5 billion B notes, with final amounts still being negotiated and subject to change.

The key term of the transaction is Broadcom’s “residual value support” agreement.

According to the agreement, if Anthropic fails to fulfill its lease payment obligations within a certain period, the SPV will sell the chips to repay debt investors;

If the chip sale cannot fill the gap, Broadcom will cover 100% of the losses for A1 and A2 investors.

This arrangement gives the A1 and A2 notes credit quality equivalent to Broadcom’s investment-grade rating, without affecting Broadcom’s own rating or balance sheet.

According to Trace bond pricing data, Broadcom’s current corporate bond yields range from about 4% to 5%, depending on maturity.

A similar residual value protection structure was previously used in Meta’s Louisiana Hyperion data center project bonds, which allowed those bonds to be priced and traded at Meta’s corporate bond level.

AI Chip Financing, an Expanding Emerging Market

As technology companies continue to increase spending on AI data centers and computing power facilities, the high cost of chips has given rise to a large financing market for GPUs and custom chips.

Companies like data center operator CoreWeave have pioneered financing using GPU-collateralized loan models, and this transaction extends similar logic to Google’s TPUs.

Although Nvidia’s GPUs still dominate the AI chip market, Google’s TPUs are emerging as an important competitor, and Broadcom and other companies are also developing alternative solutions.

This Apollo-led private debt syndication is non-public in nature, and Apollo and Blackstone plan to sell portions of the debt while keeping significant positions themselves.

According to sources, investors are submitting subscription intention this week, and the transaction is expected to be completed next week; however, discussions are ongoing, and details may change.

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