📊 Anthropic offers investors over 10% returns to bankroll chips as AI boom gets pricier

Anthropic is offering Blackstone yields above 10% to fund its $60B chip financing deal, reports the FT.

The private equity giant’s total returns could be even higher once new-issue discounts and fees are included.

Comparable borrowers typically pay around 7% in the public bond market.

The startup is on a chip binge, diversifying its hardware supply across Nvidia GPUs, Amazon Trainium chips and Google TPUs.

Like other tech giants, Anthropic is piling up debt to secure scarce chips and computing power despite rumblings about a possible AI boom turning bust – with fallout potentially reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis.

The financing package ‘Project North Star’ aims to help Anthropic secure ∼1.5 gigawatts of custom Google AI chips known as tensor processing units (TPUs).

Key terms:

🌏 ∼$18B in junior loans, half of which ($9B) would come from Blackstone funds and be backed by Anthropic’s five-year lease payments on the chips

🌏 remaining $9B of junior debt is expected to be sold later to a wider group of investors, potentially at a lower yield

🌏 ∼$42 billion in senior debt guaranteed by Broadcom, which co-develops the chips with Google

Earlier this year, the AI startup raised around $4.4B through a deal dubbed ‘Project Big Sky’ at an 8.5% interest rate.

The jump reflects how investors are demanding a fatter payday to bankroll the AI boom amid warnings that investment growth may peak in 2026 as chip, power and labor shortages bite, leaving Big Tech with shrinking profits - while rising Chinese competition looms.

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