Anthropic Offers Blackstone Over 10% Yield to Finance Chip Purchases
nashnova research
Anthropic is paying Blackstone over 10% yield on a $9 billion debt deal to fund AI chips — up from 8.5% on a similar deal just four months ago. The 150+ basis-point jump signals that the market is repricing the cost of AI's capital appetite.
What is this deal actually buying?
Anthropic launched "Project North Star," a $60 billion financing program to purchase roughly 1.5 gigawatts of custom chips — Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs, chips purpose-built for AI training).
Blackstone funds are committing $9 billion, half of a $18 billion junior-debt tranche. The debt is backed by Anthropic's five-year chip-lease payments.
This means → Anthropic is not buying chips outright. It is packaging future lease payments as collateral to borrow now — trading tomorrow's revenue for today's compute.
Why did the interest rate jump so much in four months?
Four months ago Anthropic closed "Project Big Sky," a similar deal worth roughly $4.4 billion at 8.5%. This time the coupon is 10%, with the all-in yield even higher after issuance discounts and fees.
For comparison, borrowers with similar credit profiles pay about 7% in the public bond market (per the ICE BofA BB U.S. High-Yield Index).
In plain terms = same company, same deal type, 150+ basis points more in four months. Investors see rising risk in AI companies borrowing at this pace and are charging a steeper premium.
How is the $60 billion package structured?
The package has two layers: roughly $42 billion in senior debt guaranteed by Broadcom (the semiconductor firm co-developing chips with Google), and $18 billion in junior loans. Blackstone takes half; the rest will be sold to a broader investor base in coming months, likely at a slightly lower rate.
Once the full amount is drawn down by 2027, the debt is expected to enter the institutional 144A bond market — a private-placement channel for qualified institutional buyers.
This means → this is the largest chip-financing deal on record and a stress test for AI debt-market capacity. Whether the market can absorb this volume depends on follow-on investor demand.
Why is Blackstone willing to take 10%?
Blackstone told its investment partners this is a rare window to access high-yield debt linked to Anthropic. Once the company goes public and secures an investment-grade rating, borrowing costs will drop sharply — and so will the opportunity.
Rating agency KBRA rated Anthropic one notch below investment grade in June this year. The junior debt in this deal is expected to receive a similar rating.
In plain terms = Blackstone is betting on a timing gap: Anthropic borrows expensive now because it is pre-IPO and sub-investment-grade. After listing, borrowing gets cheaper — but Blackstone will already have locked in 10%.
What does this signal for AI-industry financing?
The sheer scale and cost of this deal reflect the market's cautious stance on AI companies digesting massive capex in a short window.
This reflects a deeper shift: the AI arms race has moved from the technology layer to the capital-structure layer — whoever can raise more money at lower cost gets more compute.
Whether Anthropic can deliver an investment-grade rating post-IPO — and materially cut its borrowing costs — will be the critical test of this logic.
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