Two large alternative asset managers are preparing a landmark financing to underwrite Anthropic's AI infrastructure. Apollo Global Management and Blackstone are putting together a $36 billion debt package that will be used to purchase custom Google AI chips and lease them to Anthropic, according to people familiar with the matter.
The capital will be deployed through a special-purpose vehicle that will buy Google-designed tensor processing units - TPUs - built for AI workloads. That vehicle will then lease the chips to Anthropic for operation in data centers located in New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana. The financing is structured to be drawn down over time, matching the delivery schedule for the chips and the commencement of leases.
Senior tranches of the financing, which amount to about $31 billion, carry an additional layer of credit support. Broadcom has agreed to provide a residual value support arrangement for those senior debt tranches. Under the terms of that commitment, if Anthropic were to default on lease obligations and proceeds from the sale of used chips fell short of the outstanding debt, Broadcom would make up the shortfall. Broadcom is also involved in the chip development process with Google.
The transaction is described as one of the largest private credit and chip-financing deals on record. Structuring the loans through an SPV that acquires and leases hardware aligns financing drawdowns with the physical availability of the TPUs and the initiation of lease cash flows, limiting upfront exposure until assets are in service.
From a funding and underwriting perspective, the arrangement combines equipment finance - the purchase and leasing of specialized chips - with private credit providers assuming long-duration exposure to an AI operator's lease payments. The inclusion of residual-value support from a chip supplier introduces an additional credit mitigation mechanism aimed at protecting senior lenders against downside in secondary market recoveries for used TPUs.
Key operational elements of the deal are the locations identified for deployment - New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana - and the gradual drawdown tied to chip availability. Those mechanics shape the timing of lease commencement and the schedule of cash flows that will support repayment of the financing.
The parties involved are positioning the structure to match capital deployment to asset readiness while supplementing lender protections with third-party support for residual value risk. Details on pricing, maturity, and the identity of other potential investors in the package were not provided in the information reviewed.