- Apollo and Blackstone are marketing a roughly $36 billion debt financing package to fund Google TPU chip purchases for Anthropic — one of the largest private credit transactions ever attempted
- The deal is structured in three tranches: a $6 billion A1, a $25 billion A2, and $4.5 billion in B notes, with Broadcom backstopping the senior tranches
- The transaction is expected to close as early as next week, injecting massive capital into Anthropic’s infrastructure without diluting equity
- The deal underscores how private credit markets have become the primary financing engine for the AI arms race, filling a gap that public markets and venture alone cannot
What Happened?
Apollo Global Management and Blackstone are shopping a roughly $36 billion debt deal to institutional investors, with proceeds earmarked to purchase Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) that will be leased to Anthropic for its AI training and inference workloads. The structure is complex: a $6 billion senior A1 tranche, a $25 billion A2 tranche, and $4.5 billion in subordinated B notes. Broadcom is backstopping the A1 and A2 tranches, adding a layer of creditworthiness to an otherwise novel asset class. The deal is expected to close next week.
Why It Matters?
At $36 billion, this is shaping up to be one of the largest private credit transactions in history — and it signals a fundamental shift in how AI infrastructure gets financed. Rather than equity rounds that dilute founders and early investors, hyperscalers and AI labs are increasingly turning to structured debt secured against compute assets. For Apollo and Blackstone, it represents a lucrative new frontier: AI infrastructure debt that yields more than traditional leveraged loans while being backed by tangible, in-demand hardware. For Anthropic, it means access to Google’s most advanced chips at scale without burning through equity capital. The Broadcom backstop adds credibility and signals chipmaker confidence in Anthropic’s ability to generate revenue from the capacity.
What’s Next?
If the deal closes on schedule next week, it immediately becomes a benchmark transaction that other AI labs, cloud providers, and private credit funds will study and replicate. Expect similar structures to emerge for other frontier AI companies seeking to lock up compute without equity dilution. The deal also raises questions about concentration risk in AI infrastructure financing — and whether regulators will eventually scrutinize the interplay between private credit markets, Big Tech chip suppliers, and AI development. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s recent $965 billion valuation and this debt deal together position it as one of the best-capitalized AI labs in the world.
Source: Bloomberg
