NEW YORK — Anthropic is paying well above market rates to secure computing power, offering Blackstone a yield exceeding 10% on a $9 billion junior debt investment tied to a $60 billion chip financing package the largest deal of its kind to date.
The arrangement, internally dubbed “Project North Star,” will fund Anthropic’s acquisition of roughly 1.5 gigawatts of Google’s custom tensor processing units (TPUs), according to the Financial Times, which first reported the deal. The structure reveals both the scale of Anthropic’s infrastructure ambitions and the premium the AI lab must now pay to attract capital as investor skepticism over AI-related debt grows.
- $60 billion total chip financing package the largest of its kind
- $9 billion committed by Blackstone-managed funds in junior debt
- 10%+ yield offered to Blackstone, well above the ~7% typical for similar borrowers
- 1.5 GW of Google TPUs to be acquired by Anthropic
- $42 billion of the package is senior debt guaranteed by Broadcom
The $60 billion package is split into two tranches. The bulk about $42 billion consists of senior secured debt guaranteed by Broadcom, the chip designer working with Google on TPU development. Broadcom’s A-minus credit rating provides substantial backing for this portion, making it far more palatable to institutional lenders.
The remaining $18 billion is junior debt, backed only by Anthropic’s five-year lease payments on the chips. Blackstone-managed funds have committed $9 billion to this riskier tranche half of the total junior offering. The investment giant was offered a 10% coupon, with total returns exceeding that level once issuance discounts and fees are factored in. By comparison, borrowers with similar credit profiles typically pay around 7% in public bond markets, according to the ICE BofA BB US High Yield Index.
The remaining $9 billion in junior debt is expected to be offered to other investors in the coming months, potentially at lower yields as the deal gains momentum.
Anthropic received a credit rating one notch below investment grade from KBRA in June, and the new junior debt is expected to receive a similar assessment. That sub-investment-grade status explains much of the yield premium. But the higher borrowing cost also reflects broader market dynamics: investors are demanding greater compensation for AI infrastructure debt as concerns mount over whether massive capital expenditures in data centers and chips will translate into sustainable profits.
The contrast with Anthropic’s previous financing is telling. Just four months ago, the company raised approximately $4.4 billion through a similar arrangement called “Project Big Sky” at an 8.5% interest rate, according to the FT report. The jump from 8.5% to above 10% in a matter of months underscores how rapidly lender sentiment has shifted.
Blackstone, for its part, framed the investment to partners as a rare opportunity: high yield on Anthropic-linked debt before the company potentially secures an investment-grade rating and dramatically lowers its future borrowing costs.
For Anthropic, the deal is a calculated trade-off. The five-year-old AI lab needs enormous computing capacity to train and run its models, and Google’s TPUs represent a critical alternative to Nvidia’s dominant and expensive GPUs. Paying above-market rates is the price of locking in that capacity now rather than risk being outbid or delayed.
For the broader AI financing market, Project North Star serves as a bellwether. Wall Street and Silicon Valley are watching closely to see whether investors will absorb $60 billion in AI-related debt at a time when public patience for data center construction is wearing thin. If the deal syndicates successfully, it signals continued appetite for AI infrastructure bets. If it struggles, it could foreshadow a reckoning for the sector’s debt-fueled expansion.
The debt could become tradable in the institutional 144A bond market once the financing is drawn down in 2027. By then, Anthropic hopes to have secured an investment-grade rating and with it, cheaper access to capital for the next round of chips.
