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Apollo Global Management and Blackstone have finalised a landmark $35 billion financing package tied to Anthropic's artificial intelligence infrastructure, in what ranks among the largest private credit transactions ever assembled in the technology sector.
The deal, structured through a special-purpose vehicle formed by Apollo's Atlas SP Partners unit, was designed to purchase Google's custom AI chips and lease them back to Anthropic, which will use the hardware to train and run its Claude models. Broadcom is backstopping payments on the largest portions of the financing and was advised by Morgan Stanley, which helped arrange the transaction. Roughly half of the total $35 billion was syndicated out to other investors.
The financing is split across three tranches. The two senior layers, $6 billion in A1 notes and $24 billion in A2 notes, carry Broadcom's backing, which secured borrowing costs in line with the chipmaker's strong credit profile. The A1 notes priced at 100 basis points over Treasuries, while the A2 notes carried a 5.75% coupon and drew institutional buyers including Apollo's Athene insurance arm. A third tranche of $4.5 billion in B notes, without Broadcom's guarantee, priced at par with an 8.5% coupon.
Underpinning the senior debt is a residual value support agreement from Broadcom, under which the chipmaker would cover any shortfall for senior noteholders in full should Anthropic fail to meet lease payments over a defined period, a structure that echoes a similar arrangement Meta used for its Hyperion data centre in Louisiana.
The transaction forms the opening move in a considerably larger venture. On Broadcom's earnings call this week, chief executive Hock Tan confirmed the chipmaker is building what he described as an AI XPV platform alongside Apollo, Blackstone, and other major investors, targeting deployment of more than 20 gigawatts of compute capacity through 2028, with frontier AI labs including Anthropic and OpenAI as intended beneficiaries.
The deal arrives as Anthropic accelerates toward a public market debut. The Claude developer recently filed confidentially for a US listing and last month closed a funding round valuing the company at $965 billion.
