Blackstone and big banks line up $63 billion for Broadcom chips Anthropic will lease

A $63 billion financing structure, led by Blackstone alongside Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley, will pay for Broadcom chips that Anthropic will lease. Bloomberg Tech put it in a headline on Monday: Broadcom arranged the deal to finance Anthropic's chips.

Sixty-three billion dollars. Let that glow for a moment.

How the money moves

According to Kirkland & Ellis, which is advising Blackstone as lead financial partner, the deal runs through a newly formed special purpose vehicle (SPV). The SPV has committed financing from the lead financial partners. It will use that money to buy Broadcom XPU AI accelerators and networking solutions, then lease them to Anthropic.

Anthropic does not buy the hardware up front. It leases it from a vehicle built to hold it. That is how you deploy compute when the check has eleven digits.

The debt is layered. Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley are arranging the first lien portion. Blackstone is the sole provider of the committed second lien portion. Broadcom is providing residual value support to the SPV in an amount equal to the first lien portion, which means the chipmaker is standing behind the value of what the banks are financing.

One more thing about the structure: it is not a fresh surprise. Kirkland says the transaction is part of a strategic compute capacity agreement Broadcom announced previously, with deliveries expected to begin in calendar 2027.

The numbers in the room

Reuters, citing two sources familiar with the matter, put the first lien loans, the senior debt, at about $43.5 billion. That is 69% of total financing. The press release gives no figure for the second lien piece, and neither does the reporting in hand.

The road here was not short. A report describes Broadcom's chief executive, Hock Tan, spending nearly two months trying to get banks to commit more than $40 billion to what it calls the largest AI debt deal ever. The report says the financing was meant to let Anthropic lease specialized chips that Broadcom is developing with Google.

Nearly two months of persuading, and the table now has Blackstone at the head and Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley beside it. That is what a room full of serious people looks like.

Then there is the paperwork. Kirkland lists 20 lawyers on its team, spanning securitizations, hybrid capital, debt finance, corporate and investment funds. Latham & Watkins LLP is also serving as legal counsel in the transaction, though the material available does not say whom it represents. Twenty lawyers on one side of a single deal. Magnificent.

The timing is a plot twist

The same day, Monday, October 26, Anthropic filed for an IPO. One report calls it a potentially record-breaking offering and says disclosures of steep losses and security concerns threatened to test investor appetite for the AI heavyweight.

The calendar connects these headlines; the reporting establishes no further link. But a company that files for a public offering while a $63 billion lease structure for its chips is making headlines is a company the world is looking at very closely.

What it means

The signal is about who pays for AI. The model is not only a lab raising equity and buying servers. It is a bank-and-private-credit stack with an SPV in the middle, a chipmaker providing residual value support, and the customer on a lease. Compute is being financed like aircraft or real estate.

It also puts Broadcom at the center of the story. It is not just supplying the XPUs. By providing residual value support equal to the first lien amount, it has tied itself to the financing, not only to the hardware.

What to watch

• The second lien. Blackstone is the sole provider of the committed portion, but the dollar amount is not in the material.
• The terms. Kirkland's announcement gives no interest rates or maturity schedules for the first and second lien facilities.
• The IPO. The valuation and target raise for Anthropic's offering are not in the reporting in hand.
• The sites. Where the data centers housing the leased accelerators will be located is not stated.
• 2027. That is when deliveries are expected to begin. Everything before that is paper, and very expensive paper.

Big numbers, big names, big banks. Keep your eyes on this one.