Anthropic’s $63 billion chip financing puts a conditional backstop on Broadcom

Bank of America, Blackstone, Citi and Morgan Stanley announced a $63 billion financing structure for Anthropic’s Broadcom AI equipment on October 26. A separate vehicle will buy the hardware and lease it to Anthropic, with deliveries expected to begin in 2027.

The newly formed special purpose vehicle will be the borrower, equipment owner and lessor. It will purchase Broadcom XPU AI accelerators and networking products. Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley are arranging first-lien financing; Blackstone is the sole provider of its committed second-lien portion. Broadcom will provide residual-value support equivalent to the first-lien financing.

The capacity plan predates this financing announcement. On April 6, Anthropic said a Google and Broadcom agreement would provide multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity starting in 2027, mostly in the United States. It described this as infrastructure for training and running Claude to meet customer demand worldwide, alongside its use of AWS Trainium and NVIDIA GPUs.

Anthropic’s October 26 IPO filing describes five-year Broadcom finance leases for equipment in facilities operated by others on its behalf. Aggregate rent across those agreements is approximately $161.2 billion excluding interest. That broader lease-payment total cannot be added to the new financing headline as fresh capital raised.

Broadcom’s exposure depends on equipment value

Broadcom’s October 27 filing describes its residual-value backstop as a contingent liability. Its amount increases as racks are delivered and deployed, then falls as the customer pays its lease obligations. Maximum undiscounted exposure upon deployment is approximately $43 billion.

If the customer defaults on its lease, Broadcom’s potential liability is the difference between 72.5% of outstanding lease amounts and the value recovered from selling the AI racks.

Remedies include assuming the lease, reselling racks to the seller at a fixed price under certain conditions, or arranging their sale. Broadcom considers a payout unlikely, citing the customer’s expected profitability trajectory and the assets’ continuing value.

The presentation lists contractual payments, re-leasing, redeployment and collateral value as protections. Illustrative exposure declines to zero over five years of lease payments. That illustration assumes delivery and payment schedules; actual balances and timing may differ.

Anthropic’s filing says quarterly rent typically begins when equipment is ready for service, or earlier in some circumstances such as facility delays. Anthropic guarantees its two leasing subsidiaries’ obligations, secured by the equipment. Cancellation during the lease term is restricted to contractual conditions such as default.

The Information made the financing risks the subject of an October 27 video featuring D.A. Davidson technology research head Gil Luria and its reporter Dakin Campbell. The publisher’s description characterizes the new debt vehicles used by Broadcom and SpaceX as a risky, speculative phase of AI infrastructure investment. That is the outlet’s assessment. The joint financing announcement expects Anthropic equipment deliveries to begin in 2027.