Broadcom is in talks with a group of lenders to raise more than $60 billion in debt to finance AI chips for Anthropic and other customers — a financing package that could ultimately swell to as much as $100 billion, according to Bloomberg News. If completed at those figures, the deal would rank among the largest debt raises in corporate history and mark a new scale for AI infrastructure financing.
The talks, first reported in late August and still evolving, represent the most aggressive bet yet on a new model of AI compute: chipmakers financing their own silicon through Wall Street and leasing it to AI labs. The scale of money now flowing into AI compute buildouts is redefining the hardware industry, a transformation covered daily on AI Buzz Wire. For more context on this story, see our ongoing breaking AI news.
How the Financing Is Structured
According to Bloomberg's sources, the package has two parts: a junior tranche of roughly $30 billion and a senior-secured tranche of between $60 billion and $70 billion. Broadcom would guarantee a portion of the senior tranche, and a special-purpose vehicle would issue the debt — keeping the borrowing off Broadcom's balance sheet while giving lenders a claim on the assets inside the vehicle.
Crucially, Anthropic does not buy the chips under this arrangement. Investors finance the hardware purchases and then lease the equipment to the AI lab, converting a massive capital expense into an operating one. For a company racing to scale compute ahead of rivals, that distinction matters: leasing preserves capital and credit capacity while still securing years of dedicated silicon supply.
The staged approach also reduces execution risk for lenders. Rather than underwriting the full $100 billion at once, the partnership can size each tranche to demonstrated demand, adjusting terms as AI workloads — and Anthropic's revenue — grow into the capacity being built.
Blackstone and Apollo Global Management are in talks to participate, according to the report. Spokespeople for Broadcom, Anthropic, Apollo and Blackstone all declined to comment. The figures under discussion could bring the total raise to as much as $100 billion, and the financing may arrive in stages rather than in a single transaction.
The $35 Billion Precedent
The new deal extends a partnership already in motion. In June, Broadcom, Apollo and Blackstone formed the AI XPV partnership, whose opening transaction raised $35 billion to expand Anthropic's computing capacity using Broadcom custom chips and networking equipment.
In that first deal, Broadcom backstopped most of the debt while Apollo and Blackstone financed the chip purchases. That backstop allowed the senior tranches to secure investment-grade ratings, materially lowering borrowing costs — a template the new, far larger financing is expected to follow.
The 20-Gigawatt Ambition
The partnership's stated goal is to finance more than 20 gigawatts of computing power for leading AI labs by 2028 — capacity roughly equal to the output of 20 nuclear power plants, at a cost Bloomberg estimates in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
The first $35 billion commitment adds about one gigawatt. By that math, the partnership has funded roughly a twentieth of its target, which is precisely why lenders are now discussing numbers an order of magnitude larger.
Broadcom's Silicon Empire
The financing talks underscore Broadcom's central position in the custom-chip economy. The company designs custom AI silicon for Alphabet and Meta as tech giants look to reduce their reliance on Nvidia, and it holds chip supply agreements with both Anthropic and OpenAI.
The deal flow extends further. Broadcom has an agreement with Apple worth more than $30 billion, and in July it signed a $200 billion deal with Samsung covering memory, foundry and advanced packaging through 2030. Chief Executive Hock Tan said in March that he expects Broadcom's AI chip sales to exceed $100 billion next year.
Investors have largely cheered the strategy. Broadcom shares rose as much as 1.1% in late trading after Bloomberg's initial report, and the stock had gained about 5% for the year at that point.
Anthropic's Parallel Money Hunt
The chip financing is only one strand of Anthropic's fundraising web. An investment firm is lending about $1.3 billion toward a Texas data center that will house its systems, and the company is finalizing a revolving credit facility of more than $10 billion ahead of a planned listing — a striking move for a startup still burning capital at frontier scale.
The Debt Question Hanging Over AI
Not everyone is comfortable with the trajectory. As AI infrastructure increasingly runs on borrowed money — chipmakers guaranteeing debt, private credit funds underwriting gigawatts, labs leasing instead of buying — analysts have begun asking what happens to these long-dated obligations if AI revenue growth disappoints.
The model has undeniable near-term logic: investment-grade ratings lower costs, labs preserve capital, and chipmakers secure demand. But it also binds the fortunes of semiconductor giants, private equity, and AI labs into a single wager on compound growth in AI compute demand.
For now, lenders are still lining up. A $100 billion debt raise would not just fund Anthropic's next generation of compute — it would confirm that Wall Street now sees AI infrastructure as an asset class of its own.
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