Apollo and Blackstone shop ~$36B record debt deal to buy Google TPUs for Anthropic, Broadcom backstopping

Apollo Global Management and Blackstone are arranging a roughly $36 billion debt financing—described as potentially the largest chip-financing debt transaction and one of the biggest private-credit deals ever—to fund Anthropic's purchase of Google's custom tensor processing units (TPUs), which Anthropic would then lease, reporting said on May 29, 2026. The proposed structure spans three tranches: about $6 billion of A1 notes, roughly $25 billion of A2 notes, and about $4.5 billion of B notes, with a delayed-draw mechanism allowing drawdowns as chips become available, and chips to be deployed at facilities in New York, Texas, Louisiana and Indiana. Crucially, Broadcom—which co-develops the TPUs with Google—is providing 'residual value support,' guaranteeing shortfalls on the senior A1/A2 tranches if chip resale fails to cover the debt, giving the deal stronger credit standing than a high-growth startup like Anthropic could provide alone.

Investors were being solicited within the week, with closing expected shortly after. The financing surfaced days after Anthropic disclosed a $65 billion equity round at a $965 billion valuation, underscoring how the lab is stacking equity, leases and structured debt to secure compute. The deal also became a focal point in the AI-bubble debate: critics including investor Michael Burry pointed to such structures—and Apollo-cited data showing a large share of high-yield and investment-grade issuance now tied to AI—as evidence of circular financing and dot-com-style risk concentration.

The transaction's reliance on a vendor (Broadcom) backstopping debt to buy that vendor's own ecosystem chips drew particular scrutiny. Terms are as reported and were not finalized at filing.