Banks, Blackstone pledge US$63 billion to finance Broadcom chips for Anthropic
Bank of America, Blackstone, Citi and Morgan Stanley will provide US$63 billion in financing for Broadcom’s AI chips and networking gear to be leased to Anthropic. Broadcom is providing residual value support to lenders. The deal highlights growing bank and asset-manager roles in AI infrastructure f
Bank of America, Blackstone, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley will provide US$63 billion in financing to buy Broadcom’s artificial-intelligence chips and networking equipment for Anthropic, in one of the largest debt deals tied to the AI buildout, the companies said on Monday.
Broadcom is providing “residual value support” to the lenders, who are offering first-lien loans or senior debt, effectively giving a significant guarantee in the financing structure. The size of the first-lien loans is about US$43.5 billion, or 69 per cent of total financing, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Blackstone will provide the committed portion of the second-lien financing, which ranks below senior debt.
The transaction will be carried out through a newly formed special purpose vehicle that will purchase Broadcom’s AI accelerators and networking equipment and lease them to the maker of the Claude chatbot, the companies said. Deliveries are expected to begin in 2027 as part of a previously announced strategic compute capacity agreement involving Broadcom.
The latest deal highlights the growing role of banks and alternative asset managers in financing the infrastructure needed to support rising demand for AI computing capacity. Apollo and Blackstone had previously agreed to finance a US$35 billion expansion of Anthropic’s AI computing capacity under an earlier agreement with Broadcom. Broadcom’s backstop in that deal was up to US$29 billion, it said in a filing.
Anthropic filed for a potentially record-breaking initial public offering on Monday, even as disclosures of steep losses and security concerns threatened to test investor appetite for the AI heavyweight. While Moody’s described Broadcom as one of the strongest large technology companies, it warned that the risk would increase if multiple transactions were undertaken over a short period to meet the sizable funding needs of frontier AI labs.
The release did not disclose the breakdown of the loans, and Broadcom did not respond to a request for comment.