Apollo, Broadcom, Google and Anthropic Raise $35 Billion for AI Chips at Sub-6% Cost
Updated
Updated · Financial Times · Jun 10
Apollo, Broadcom, Google and Anthropic Raise $35 Billion for AI Chips at Sub-6% Cost
3 articles · Updated · Financial Times · Jun 10
Summary
$35 billion Project Big Sky will buy Google-Broadcom TPUs and lease them to Anthropic, giving the AI company more compute capacity as it pushes toward a potential IPO.
Broadcom made the structure work by backing most of the debt if Anthropic defaults, helping Big Sky issue investment-grade bonds with coupons below 6% despite Anthropic's limited operating history.
Even the riskier slice found buyers: Big Sky's junior, non-guaranteed debt priced around a 10% yield, with Apollo, Blackstone and banks placing the paper to institutional investors including insurers.
The deal extends a fast-growing AI financing model after Meta and Blue Owl's nearly $30 billion Beignet vehicle, as hyperscalers plan $725 billion of AI spending and private capital repackages that risk for conservative investors.
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.