According to reports from the Financial Times on October 16-17, 2026, Anthropic is offering private equity giant Blackstone an annualized yield exceeding 10%, inviting it to subscribe $9 billion to the subordinated tranche of a $60 billion chip-specific debt internally codenamed "Project North Star." The funds will be used to purchase approximately 1.5 gigawatts of Google custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) through a special purpose vehicle, under a five-year contract.
A $60 Billion Deal with a Tiered Structure
The overall financing structure resembles a layered cake, with different tiers bearing different risks and corresponding to different returns. According to reports, approximately $42 billion is senior debt, backed by Broadcom's provision of residual value support as collateral, with an expected yield of about 7%. The remaining approximately $18 billion is subordinated debt, of which funds managed by Blackstone are expected to subscribe $9 billion—half of the subordinated position—with the other $9 billion planned to be gradually offered to other investors over the coming months, potentially at lower yields.
The 10% coupon Blackstone receives is only a starting point—issuance discounts and fees will further push up its actual total return. Meanwhile, according to the ICE BofA BB-rated US High Yield Index, borrowers with equivalent credit ratings pay approximately 7% in the public market, meaning Anthropic's premium exceeds 300 basis points.
This debt will not sit directly on Anthropic's balance sheet. The transaction is completed through a special purpose vehicle (SPV)—essentially an independent "hardware holding company" that holds the chip assets and bears the corresponding debt, while Anthropic obtains computing power usage rights through a five-year lease. This design allows creditors to directly claim rights over the chip hardware itself, rather than lending solely based on confidence in Anthropic's future debt-servicing capacity, reducing credit risk—particularly for senior lenders.
Why Bring Broadcom In
Broadcom's role in this transaction deserves separate analysis. The backer of the senior debt is not Google or Anthropic, but Broadcom—it provides senior lenders with a residual value guarantee on the chip assets, essentially an additional stop-loss line: if Anthropic encounters debt-servicing difficulties, senior lenders can still rely on Broadcom's backing to recover assets, thereby keeping the senior interest rate down to approximately 7%.
This arrangement reflects a core logic of AI chip debt—computing hardware itself has realizable secondary market value, making it closer to traditional asset-backed lending rather than pure credit lending. Broadcom's deep collaboration with Google on TPU chip development makes it the natural choice to provide value backing for such assets.
The Credit Dilemma Behind the 400 Basis Point Premium
Anthropic's current credit rating is key to understanding this high interest rate. Credit rating agency KBRA assigned Anthropic a rating one notch below investment grade in June 2026. This means that in the public bond market, Anthropic would already need to pay a high-yield premium, and combined with the liquidity discount from the deal size and the higher loss-absorption requirements of the subordinated position itself, the 10%+ coupon has its internal logic.
Anthropic's calculation is this: the company hopes to obtain an investment-grade rating after its IPO, at which point future financing costs will drop significantly. The subordinated debt in Project North Star is expected to become eligible for public trading on the institutional 144A bond market once funds are in place in 2027—at which point, if the company's credit is upgraded, early holders could gain additional price appreciation. This is the strategic logic for both sides: Anthropic locks in current computing power, Blackstone bets on future credit repair.
From Big Sky to North Star: Borrowing Costs Surge Within Four Months
Project North Star is not Anthropic's first foray into private credit channels to finance computing power. Four months earlier, Anthropic raised approximately $4.4 billion through a deal codenamed "Project Big Sky" at an interest rate of 8.5%. Even earlier, in June 2026, Anthropic completed an arrangement of approximately $35 billion with Apollo and Blackstone to fund approximately 1 gigawatt of computing power.
Lining up the three deals, the trend is clear: $4.4 billion (8.5%) → $35 billion → $60 billion (10%+). Scale jumped from single-digit billions to hundreds of billions within four months, with interest rates rising in tandem. According to reports, part of the reason for the scale surge is investor concern about the concentrated influx of AI infrastructure debt into the market in the short term, demanding higher compensation to absorb additional risk. In other words, Anthropic's rising borrowing costs are not just its own credit issue, but also reflect changes in the supply-demand structure of the entire AI compute debt market.
Anthropic's larger ambitions also emerge against this backdrop: according to reports, the company's compute capacity target is to exceed 20 gigawatts by 2028. Project North Star, if financing is completed, would provide 1.5 gigawatts, and combined with the earlier 1 gigawatt, still falls far short of the 20-gigawatt target—meaning similar-scale financing activities will continue in the coming years.
Impact on the Competitive Landscape and Stakeholder Interests
For Google, this transaction is a double-edged sword. Google is the TPU supplier, locking in a major customer through Anthropic's five-year lease; but at the same time, Anthropic reportedly already accounts for over 40% of Google's disclosed cloud backlog, and this deep entanglement means Google's revenue outlook is highly correlated with Anthropic's financial health.
For Blackstone, a 10%+ yield is attractive in the current interest rate environment, especially compared to the 7% public market benchmark. The risk of this investment centers on whether AI compute demand can continue to materialize—if AI application growth falls short of expectations, Anthropic's debt-servicing pressure will rise accordingly, with the subordinated position bearing the brunt.
For other AI labs, Project North Star's demonstration effect cuts both ways. On one hand, the SPV plus tiered debt structure sets a replicable template for similar compute financing; on the other hand, if the market's risk premium requirements for AI chip debt continue to rise, later entrants may face higher financing costs. Companies like OpenAI and xAI, which also have large-scale compute needs, will to some extent have their future financing conditions anchored by the pricing of Anthropic's deal.
For developers and enterprise users, the direct impact of this transaction lies not in API pricing but in the total available compute. The 1.5 gigawatts of TPUs are scheduled for gradual delivery starting in 2027, with no short-term impact on current model access costs. However, if Anthropic's compute expansion proceeds smoothly, it would be beneficial in the long term for maintaining inference capability competitiveness, indirectly supporting the credibility of its product roadmap.
The Financialization Calculation Before IPO
From a strategic perspective, the essence of this transaction is "trading future financial flexibility for current compute barriers." A 10%+ borrowing cost would be considered high-interest in any traditional industry, but under the logic of the AI arms race, the first-mover advantage in compute supply may be more critical than the cost of capital. If Anthropic secures a stable supply at the 3.5-gigawatt level by 2027 while competitors are still queuing for compute, the strategic value of this high-interest debt may exceed its financial cost.
Whether this logic holds depends on two premises: first, whether AI application demand can sustain rapid growth to support Anthropic's revenue covering debt costs; second, whether the IPO can proceed smoothly and bring credit upgrades. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine recently sent a letter requesting Anthropic to delay its IPO, and subsequently opened communication channels with Anthropic—according to reports, he himself acknowledged that Anthropic is currently facing pressure from multiple directions.
From observable signals, there are two key milestones for validating the strategic value of this transaction: first, whether Anthropic's capacity utilization after TPU supply actually lands in 2027 can support revenue exceeding debt costs; second, whether its credit rating can achieve an upgrade around the IPO, because once investment grade is obtained, previously issued bonds will face a refinancing window, and overall capital costs are expected to be restructured. If neither materializes as scheduled, Project North Star will transform from a strategic moat into a high-interest debt burden.
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