Anthropic stacks $71B in chip-lease debt via special purpose vehicles

Anthropic has assembled $71 billion in chip-lease debt through special purpose vehicles in roughly 60 days, a capital maneuver that keeps massive hardware deployments entirely off its corporate balance sheet. The mechanics rest on a structured-finance approach: an SPV acquires Google's tensor processing units, leases them to Anthropic, and finances the purchase through tranched debt. This structure allows Anthropic to use the hardware without owning it, avoiding the depreciation drag that would otherwise burden its primary financial statements.

The critical innovation enabling this scale is the Broadcom residual-value backstop. In the $35 billion deal closed in June 2026 — arranged by Apollo Global Management and Blackstone Credit and Insurance — Broadcom endorses the senior tranches: approximately $6 billion in Senior A1 notes and approximately $24 billion in Senior A2 notes. If Anthropic defaults on lease payments or if the hardware's resale value deteriorates, Broadcom covers the shortfall. Consequently, these senior tranches carry Broadcom's investment-grade credit rating, not Anthropic's. By contrast, the unsupported $4.5 billion Class B tranche trades at roughly 8.5 percent, a spread that quantifies the value of the backstop. This mechanism is essential: Anthropic, despite a $19 billion annualized revenue run rate, faces estimated compute spending of approximately $45 billion per year — spending that far exceeds its current cash generation and would be inaccessible via conventional corporate debt.

Anthropicis preparing for an October 2026 IPO debut, with a confidential S-1 filed June 1, led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan. The offering targets a post-money valuation anchored at $965 billion, based on the company's $65 billion Series H raise. Critically, the IPO raises equity capital for corporate operations, while the SPV structure raises debt against hardware. These are two separate financing engines funding the same compute expansion, and the SPV debt remains structurally invisible to public-market investors evaluating the equity story.

A second mega-debt package totaling a preliminary $36 billion was reported by Bloomberg in early August 2026, with Blackstone leading investor discussions. This deal targets data centers across New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Indiana and mirrors the first deal's blueprint: an SPV acquires tensor processing units, leases them to Anthropic, and Broadcom backstops the senior tranches. If finalized, Anthropic's total structured-credit exposure to Google hardware alone would exceed $71 billion, placing it among the largest private-credit arrangements ever assembled.