Apollo + Blackstone shop $36B debt deal for Anthropic to buy Google TPUs — largest chip-financing transaction in history

What was structured

The reporting from Bloomberg (originating, May 28), Yahoo Finance, TheNextWeb, AI Weekly, TradingView, and Crypto.news confirms:

• Lead arrangers: Apollo Global Management + Blackstone
• Size: approximately $36 billion total
• Borrower: special-purpose vehicle (SPV), not Anthropic directly
• Use of proceeds: purchase Google’s custom TPU chips
• Anthropic role: lease the TPUs from the SPV; deploy in data centers across New York, Texas, Louisiana, Indiana
• Off-balance-sheet structure: debt sits with the SPV, not Anthropic
• Tranche breakdown:
  • ~$6 billion A1 notes
  • ~$25 billion A2 notes
  • ~$4.5 billion B notes
• Broadcom backstop: Broadcom (co-developer of Google’s TPUs) is guaranteeing payments on the largest portions
• Yields: ~5.75% on the $25B A2 tranche (Broadcom-backed); 8-9% on the riskier B notes (not Broadcom-backed)
• Reporting dates: deal shopping reported May 28-29 (Bloomberg originating); Broadcom backing confirmed June 2 (Bloomberg follow-up)

Why this structure matters

Three reads.

1. The off-balance-sheet structure is critical for Anthropic’s IPO trajectory. Anthropic’s June 1 confidential S-1 filing launches a public-markets evaluation process where balance-sheet leverage and capital structure will be heavily scrutinized. By keeping the $36B in the SPV rather than on Anthropic’s books, the company preserves its valuation profile — already at $965B post-money — without taking on the debt that would compress public-markets multiples.

Compare to the alternative: if Anthropic borrowed $36B directly, the company would have ~$36B of debt against $47B of run-rate revenue and ~$559M projected Q2 operating profit. That’s a heavy leverage ratio for any public-markets investor to underwrite. With the SPV structure, Anthropic’s reported balance sheet stays clean while the company gets the compute capacity it needs.

2. Broadcom’s backstop is a strategic alignment signal. Broadcom co-developed Google’s TPU chips and has a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream tied to TPU production. By backstopping payments on the largest portions of the deal (~$25B A2 tranche), Broadcom is essentially guaranteeing demand for the chips its factories produce. This is the structural pattern that emerged in the April 6 Anthropic-Google-Broadcom partnership — Broadcom is now financially aligned with Anthropic’s success.

3. The yield economics signal where institutional capital sees the risk. A 5.75% yield on the A2 tranche (with Broadcom backing) is comparable to investment-grade corporate debt — institutional investors are treating the Broadcom-guaranteed portion as essentially risk-free at this scale. The 8-9% yield on the unbacked B notes signals where the real perceived risk lies — what happens if Anthropic’s compute demand falls short of the contracted leases? The B-note pricing implies institutional capital is willing to take that risk, but only at high-yield levels.

For context, this is the same Broadcom that’s currently working with Google on the multi-gigawatt TPU partnership announced April 6 for Anthropic compute coming online starting 2027.

How this connects to other Anthropic compute commitments

Anthropic’s 2026 compute supply chain has grown into something unprecedented in scope:

The $36B SPV adds a fifth distinct funding mechanism for Anthropic compute — not equity, not direct debt, not strategic-partner-investment, not cloud-credit allocation, but private-credit-funded chip lease-back. For institutional capital looking to participate in AI-infrastructure growth without taking equity risk in the labs themselves, this structure is genuinely novel.

Why this connects to the IPO race

Both Anthropic’s June 1 S-1 and OpenAI’s June 8 S-1 will be evaluated by public-markets investors who scrutinize three big questions:

1. Revenue trajectory — both labs strong
2. Path to profitability — Anthropic leads (projected Q2 operating profit; OpenAI projected $85B 2028 burn per WSJ)
3. Capital structure resilience — this is where the SPV matters

By financing $36B of compute through an off-balance-sheet SPV rather than equity dilution or direct debt, Anthropic optimizes for variable (3) without compromising (1) or (2). For OpenAI, which has different compute-supply mechanisms (Microsoft Azure, AWS Bedrock, Oracle Cloud), no equivalent off-balance-sheet $36B chip-financing has been publicly disclosed.

What it means for Claude and Claude Code users

Practically: nothing changes operationally. Your subscription doesn’t change, model access doesn’t change, pricing doesn’t change.

What this confirms is the capacity trajectory through 2027-2028. With $36B of TPU compute funded via this SPV plus existing NVIDIA/AWS/Microsoft channels plus the Google + Broadcom multi-gigawatt TPU partnership coming online from 2027, Anthropic’s structural capacity ceiling is being raised substantially. The SpaceX Colossus 1 rate-limit doubling from May 6 was a single-month indicator; the $36B financing is the multi-year story.

For Claude Code users specifically — the $2.5B+ ARR business inside Anthropic — capacity ceiling effectively means “how much can the product scale before usage caps tighten.” This deal materially raises that ceiling.

The honest caveats

Three caveats:

The deal is being arranged, not closed. Apollo and Blackstone are shopping the debt to other investors. Until the syndication closes, the $36B isn’t deployed. Bloomberg’s reporting indicates the deal is progressing but doesn’t confirm the close.

SPV structures have their own risks. Off-balance-sheet doesn’t mean risk-free — if Anthropic’s compute demand falls short, the SPV’s TPU lease income drops, debt servicing strains, and the SPV’s debt could be restructured in ways that ultimately affect Anthropic. The structure is favorable to Anthropic but doesn’t eliminate downside.

The Broadcom backstop has institutional limits. Broadcom guaranteeing $25B of Anthropic chip lease payments is a substantial corporate commitment. If Broadcom’s own balance sheet faces stress (which is unlikely but possible in a chip-cycle downturn), the backstop value declines and the A2 tranche’s effective yield-spread should widen.

What it changes for Pick Right readers tomorrow

If you’re a Claude Pro subscriber, nothing operationally changes. If you’re tracking the AI competitive landscape, this is one of the most structurally important deals of 2026 — not because of what it adds to today’s capacity but because of what it signals about institutional capital’s appetite for AI-infrastructure financing at unprecedented scale.

For broader context, see the Claude review, the Claude Code review, the Anthropic S-1 filing coverage, the Anthropic Series H + Opus 4.8 article, the Google + Broadcom multi-gigawatt partnership news, the SpaceX Colossus capacity unlock, and the Q2 first profitable quarter coverage for the broader Anthropic compute-supply-chain and IPO-pipeline picture.

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