Anthropic has secured $71 billion in chip-lease debt over a two-month period by leveraging specialized off-balance-sheet vehicles, allowing the AI firm to aggressively scale its compute capacity without impacting its primary corporate financial statements.
The Mechanics of Off-Balance-Sheet Scaling
The core of this financial strategy lies in the use of special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to sequester massive hardware deployments. Rather than carrying the burden of hardware depreciation on its own balance sheet, Anthropic utilizes these structured finance vehicles to manage its growing infrastructure requirements.
Broadcom’s Critical Role as a Credit Backstop
The $35 billion deal finalized in June 2026, orchestrated by Apollo Global Management and Blackstone Credit and Insurance, serves as the blueprint. In this arrangement, the SPV acquires Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) and leases them back to Anthropic. The structure is anchored by a Broadcom residual value backstop.
This backstop is vital: if Anthropic defaults or the hardware’s resale value plummets, Broadcom covers the difference. This allows the senior tranches—approximately $6 billion in Senior A1 notes and $24 billion in Senior A2 notes—to effectively inherit Broadcom’s investment-grade credit rating. In contrast, the $4.5 billion Class B tranche, which lacks this support, trades at an 8.5 percent spread, highlighting the immense value provided by the Broadcom guarantee.
IPO Projections vs. Debt Structures
As the market anticipates Anthropic’s October 2026 IPO, it is crucial to separate the company’s two distinct capital engines. While the confidential S-1 filed with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan aims to raise equity for corporate operations, the SPVs function as a separate debt-based engine for hardware acquisition. Consequently, this $71 billion in structured debt remains largely invisible to public-market investors focusing solely on equity.
Expanding the Footprint: The $36 Billion Follow-up
Following the initial success, a second $36 billion debt package led by Blackstone is currently in preliminary talks. This deal targets data center deployments across New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana. If finalized, this will bring Anthropic’s total structured-credit exposure to Google hardware to $71 billion, marking one of the largest private-credit arrangements in history.
The New Era of Compute-Driven Finance
Anthropic’s strategy represents the latest iteration of the “Compute Landlord Thesis.” While previous industry benchmarks included OpenAI’s vendor-financed exposure with Nvidia and the massive equity-funded initiatives of SpaceX, Anthropic has pioneered a credit-funded model. By essentially borrowing Broadcom’s balance sheet to secure scarce hardware, Anthropic has proven that in the current AI arms race, the sophistication of the funding mechanism is just as critical as the silicon itself.
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