Broadcom banks begin raising $60B for Anthropic chips

Banks working for Broadcom ↗ 3.35% have started raising $60 billion in new debt to pay for AI chips that will benefit Anthropic and other companies, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. A day earlier, Reuters reported that a filing showed Broadcom will lend Anthropic up to $42 billion so the AI company can lease Broadcom's chips.tradingview+1

Investors on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley are watching the deal closely. It is a test of whether lenders still want to fund the AI buildout at a time when the public is pushing back against new data-center construction.moneycontrol

How the deal is structured

According to Bloomberg, the banks are getting ready to send syndication letters to investors for a $42 billion Class A senior-secured tranche. The people who described the deal said it has not yet been announced. Blackstone ↘ 0.44% is leading a separate $18 billion Class B junior tranche. It is putting up $9 billion from its own funds and plans to sell the rest to other investors. Broadcom declined to comment.bloomberg+1

People familiar with the talks said in August that the financing would help Anthropic and others get chips and other AI infrastructure. The deal has been coming together for weeks.moneycontrol

A deepening relationship

Barron's reported that, beyond the loan, Anthropic is expected to become Broadcom's largest customer next year. That would tie the chip designer's growth more closely to the AI developer's growing need for computing power. For Broadcom, the arrangement is part of a push to sell more chips and data-center equipment and compete with Nvidia ↗ 1.34%.barrons+1

Under this model, the chipmaker helps fund its customer's purchases, essentially paying for the demand for its own products. Nvidia has taken a similar approach. In August it announced a partnership with six large financial firms, Blackstone among them, to raise more than $500 billion for AI, including money to help customers buy its chips.moneycontrol

Part of a broader debt wave

The Broadcom package comes on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars in debt already raised for AI infrastructure. Most of that money has gone to data centers, but deals that finance chips and servers have also become more common. Blackstone already has a stake in Anthropic, and Bloomberg reported that this investment has helped lift returns at Blackstone's private equity fund for wealthy investors.moneycontrol

How investors respond to the $42 billion senior tranche will show whether there is still strong demand to fund AI chips, even as some people question how much the industry is spending.