Blackstone explores second massive debt package to finance Anthropic’s chip usage

Blackstone has held preliminary discussions with investors about raising at least $36 billion in debt to finance Anthropic’s use of Google’s custom artificial intelligence chips, according to Bloomberg.

The size and structure of the potential financing remain under discussion. Blackstone has also not made a final decision on whether it will lead the transaction.

A deal completed at the proposed size would exceed the $35 billion debt package arranged by Blackstone and Apollo Global Management roughly two months ago. That financing supports Anthropic’s lease of Google Tensor Processing Units and ranks among the largest private credit transactions ever completed.

Google and Broadcom announced an expanded infrastructure agreement with Anthropic in April covering several gigawatts of next generation TPU capacity. Anthropic expects the additional computing capacity to begin coming online in 2027.

The earlier debt transaction was arranged through the AI XPV Platform, a partnership formed by Broadcom, Apollo and Blackstone to finance computing infrastructure for AI companies.

Broadcom provided financial support for the largest senior portions of that debt. Morgan Stanley advised Broadcom and helped arrange the transaction, according to Bloomberg.

Anthropic plans to use Google chips across five data centers under the earlier financing agreement. Google was an early investor in Anthropic and has continued to purchase equity while supporting infrastructure projects connected to the company.

The potential second financing follows Anthropic’s confidential filing for a US initial public offering. The Claude developer is preparing for a possible public market debut while expanding its access to computing capacity from Google and other infrastructure providers.

Anthropic has committed to spending about $200 billion on Google Cloud services and chips over five years, according to a May report from The Information cited by Reuters.