Broadcom is negotiating up to $100 billion in debt for Anthropic's chip buildout — nearly triple the round it closed ten weeks ago

Ten weeks after Broadcom, Apollo Global Management, and Blackstone closed a $35 billion financing platform to fund more than 1 gigawatt of Anthropic's near-term chip capacity, the same three parties are reportedly negotiating a second round nearly triple the size. Reporting from CNBC and Bloomberg, corroborated separately by SiliconANGLE, describes a new debt raise that could reach $100 billion — split into a senior tranche of roughly $60 billion to $70 billion and a junior tranche near $30 billion, structured through the same off-balance-sheet vehicle the three companies call the AI XPV Platform.

None of it is finalized. up to $100B (the reported ceiling on this raise, up from $35B ten weeks ago) is the number every report converges toward, but it comes from people described only as familiar with the talks — not from Broadcom, Apollo, Blackstone, or Anthropic on the record. CNBC's and Bloomberg's sourcing puts the senior tranche at roughly $70 billion; SiliconANGLE's separate sourcing describes the same tranche as $60 billion to $70 billion, with the total climbing toward $100 billion once the junior debt and any Broadcom guarantee are counted in. The disagreement reads like rounding and timing — different sources describing a deal still being negotiated, caught at different moments — rather than a real dispute over what the deal is for.

The mechanics matter because of what they're built to avoid. Structuring the financing through a special-purpose vehicle — rather than as debt on Broadcom's own balance sheet, or as an equity stake Anthropic would have to dilute for — lets Broadcom keep supplying chips and networking gear without the arrangement showing up as Broadcom's own debt, while Apollo and Blackstone collect a lender's return instead of taking a shareholder's risk. (This is the same basic structure private-credit funds have used across the AI buildout all year — Meta's Blue Owl-financed data-center joint venture keeps a multi-billion-dollar commitment off Meta's own books the same way.) The one figure both companies have put on the record, unlike the dollar totals, is the platform's stated ambition: more than 20 gigawatts of compute for frontier AI labs by 2028.

“The demand for AI compute is growing faster than traditional capital markets can accommodate, and this initial transaction, led by Apollo, demonstrates what becomes possible when world-class technology is paired with a partner of that caliber.” — Won Kim, Broadcom, announcing the AI XPV Platform's first tranche

That June announcement is the closest thing this story has to a confirmed baseline. Broadcom did not confirm the new financing to any of the outlets that reported it this week; Apollo and Blackstone did not comment on the record either. What's left is a real negotiation nobody outside the room has actually seen the term sheet for — only a range, an anonymous-sourcing pattern, and the size of the last one.

The arithmetic behind the lenders' side is worth stating plainly, because it's the part none of the coverage spells out. Apollo and Blackstone are not betting on Anthropic's business model directly — they're betting that leasing out chips and data-center capacity, backed by multi-year compute contracts, throws off a steadier return than owning equity in any single AI lab would. That's the same logic behind the private-credit boom financing data centers for Meta, Oracle, and others all year: a lender's claim on hardware and contracted revenue survives a model going out of fashion in a way an equity stake in the company that trained it might not. It's also why the debt keeps getting bigger rather than being replaced by equity — equity would mean Apollo and Blackstone taking a view on which AI lab wins, and a secured loan against leased hardware doesn't require having one.

For Broadcom, the calculation runs the other way. Guaranteeing a slice of the senior tranche puts its own balance sheet on the hook if Anthropic's buildout stalls — but the alternative is watching a rival chip supplier fund the gap and win the business instead. Broadcom's custom XPUs and networking gear are what the financed capacity actually buys; the debt is, in effect, a very large customer-financing arrangement dressed as an infrastructure platform. Whether that bet pays off depends on a question neither this raise nor the last one answers: whether Anthropic's revenue growth keeps pace with the compute it's committing to lease.

If the reported range holds, this second raise alone would move the AI XPV Platform's committed capital from $35 billion to somewhere between $95 billion and $135 billion in ten weeks — on a stated mission, more than 20 gigawatts by 2028, that both Broadcom and Apollo have described as still just getting started.