Broadcom Secures $63 Billion Debt Package to Finance Anthropic AI Chip Purchases

The transaction demonstrates that sustaining hardware buildouts requires industrial suppliers to absorb residual credit and asset risk to keep global lenders active amid elevated interest rates.

• Broadcom structured a $63 billion package to finance Anthropic’s acquisition of custom artificial intelligence chips and networking gear through a dedicated special purpose vehicle.
• Top-tier lenders demanded risk concessions, prompting Broadcom CEO Hock Tan to provide residual value guarantees alongside higher yields to secure commitments from Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Blackstone.
• Anthropic filed for its public listing, launching its initial public offering under ticker ANT alongside the debt package after two months of negotiations internally dubbed Project North Star.

• Compute agreements demand major scale, following a previous arrangement between Broadcom, Google, and Anthropic for 3.5 gigawatts of tensor processing units starting in 2027.
• Rising capital costs tightened bank appetite, causing several commercial lenders to reconsider original commitments exceeding $40 billion over questions of downside risk compensation.
• Vendor-backed structures bridged the divide, establishing an arrangement where lenders supply roughly $43.5 billion in first-lien debt while Broadcom guarantees equipment value on the back end.

The mechanics of Project North Star show how the capital structure underpinning artificial intelligence infrastructure has shifted. In early phases, software developers funded compute capacity using cash reserves or private equity rounds. As capacity demands scaled from tens of millions to tens of billions of dollars, reliance solely on equity became inefficient and dilutive.

The $63 billion transaction addresses this by shifting asset ownership to an off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicle (SPV). The SPV borrows capital from commercial lenders to purchase Broadcom XPUs and networking infrastructure, subsequently leasing the physical hardware back to Anthropic. This layout keeps primary equipment financing debt off Anthropic’s direct balance sheet as it submits its initial public offering registration under the ticker ANT.

However, executing this transaction exposed lender caution regarding hardware depreciation and high benchmark interest rates. Bank of America, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley originally offered commitments north of $40 billion, but syndicate appetite softened as credit committees evaluated the resale value of custom chips should model developers encounter commercial headwinds. Hock Tan bridged this gap through weekend negotiations by adjusting terms: lenders received wider interest spreads, Blackstone took a subordinated second-lien tranche, and Broadcom introduced residual value guarantees.

These guarantees alter supplier incentives. Broadcom is not simply booking a product sale; it is writing a financial backstop on the future secondary value of its silicon. If Anthropic’s lease payments falter or hardware utility declines before debt maturity, Broadcom absorbs the shortfall. In exchange, Broadcom secures guaranteed component fabrication demand and books near-term commercial volume.

The deal shows that top-tier hardware deployment at this scale requires hardware manufacturers to act as credit originators. Banks are willing to deploy liquidity to artificial intelligence ventures, but only when seasoned hardware conglomerates underwrite the underlying physical assets.

• Semiconductor and Hardware Executives: Suppliers facing multi-billion-dollar compute orders must evaluate whether to pledge company balance sheets to de-risk equipment financing for clients.
• Syndicated Debt and Leveraged Finance Desks: Investment banks gain a repeatable structured template for large-scale hardware leasing that blends senior debt, private credit, and vendor backstops.
• Enterprise Software Operators: Compute-dependent tech firms must prepare for higher structural infrastructure costs, as lenders factor asset depreciation and elevated base rates into lease pricing.
• Public Market Tech Investors: Equity analysts evaluating Broadcom and Anthropic must incorporate contingent liabilities, residual value exposure, and structured debt loads into valuation models.

• Syndicate Bond Issuance Targets: Monitor secondary debt distribution, with participating banks evaluating up to $21 billion in corporate bond offerings in early 2027 to replace bridge commitments.
• Anthropic Public Listing Progress: Watch regulatory disclosures during the ANT ticker listing process to track how lease liabilities and compute commitments are characterized to public shareholders.
• Hardware Yield and Deployment Deadlines: Track the manufacturing cadence of Broadcom XPUs leading into the 2027 operational window tied to the broader 3.5-gigawatt deployment plan.