Apollo and Blackstone raise $35bn to finance chips for Anthropic

In short: Apollo and Blackstone have completed a $35bn lending deal to help Anthropic finance the chips it needs to run and grow its AI system, Claude.

What happened

Apollo and Blackstone, two large investment firms, have finalised a $35bn private credit deal tied to Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI assistant. Private credit is lending done outside normal bank loans, often by investment funds.

The money will help Anthropic pay for chips designed by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. These chips are called tensor processing units, or TPUs, and they are specialised processors built for AI work (like using a dedicated kitchen appliance instead of a general-purpose stove).

The deal uses a structure commonly used in big financings. A separate legal entity raised the money, and lease agreements for the chips help support the value of the loan. The financing was split into parts with different levels of risk, and some of the interest payments on the safer parts were backed by Broadcom, the chipmaker involved in producing the TPUs with Google.

Why it matters

AI systems like Claude need large amounts of computing power, which depends on expensive chips and data centres. Deals like this show how much money is now flowing into the physical “hardware” behind AI. It also highlights a risk investors are debating, which is how quickly today’s AI chips may lose value as newer chips arrive, similar to how a high-end computer can feel outdated in a few years.

Source: Financial Times