Blackstone is reportedly in preliminary discussions with investors for a new debt financing deal, potentially worth at least $36 billion, for Anthropic's procurement of Google's custom chips. This new proposal, if finalized at that size, would exceed a previous $35 billion debt package arranged by Apollo Global Management and Blackstone approximately two months prior, which was one of the largest private credit transactions in history. The structure of this potential new deal is expected to mirror the earlier one, involving a special-purpose vehicle that purchases Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and leases them to Anthropic, keeping the debt off Anthropic's balance sheet.
The initial $35 billion deal was structured into approximately $6 billion of A1 notes, $25 billion of A2 notes, and $4.5 billion of B notes. Broadcom, which collaborates with Google on chip development, provided residual value support for the senior tranches (A1 and A2) in the prior deal. This support effectively substitutes Broadcom's investment-grade credit for Anthropic's pre-IPO startup risk, making these senior tranches attractive to institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies that are mandated to hold investment-grade assets. The new $36 billion proposal is also anticipated to include similar tranche breakdowns and Broadcom's payment support for the senior notes.
This new financing effort comes as Anthropic is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), having confidentially filed in the United States and targeting an IPO as early as October. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase are reportedly assisting Anthropic with its IPO process. The rapid succession of these massive debt deals underscores Anthropic's substantial need for compute infrastructure to fuel its AI development, even as it seeks to enter public markets ahead of rivals like OpenAI. The combined value of these two deals could reach around $71 billion in private chip financing for a single company, setting an unprecedented total in private credit history.
