Private equity firms Blackstone (NYSE:BX) and Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO) are helping to bring on additional investors in a debt financing deal that will assist Anthropic in building out its artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The $36 billion deal will reportedly be used to acquire Google's custom-built Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which Anthropic is expected to lease afterward, sources told Bloomberg.
The sources also stated that Broadcom Inc., a key partner in developing Google's chips, is providing payment guarantees for the largest parts of the deal.
Anthropic overtook OpenAI as the world’s most valuable startup after raising $65 billion in Series H, valuing the company at $965 billion.
Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital led the funding round.
“This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," said Krishna Rao, chief financial officer of Anthropic.
Apollo is understood to be privately seeking additional investors to participate in the chip-financing package through a debt syndication process, giving it control over which potential backers are included.
Both Apollo and Blackstone plan to offload portions of the debt, while retaining meaningful stakes for themselves, sources added.
Investors have been asked to submit their commitments this week, with the transaction closing next week, although talks are still ongoing and terms may change. Should the deal go as planned, this would be one of the "largest-ever" private credit deals as well as the largest chip-financing debt transaction, Bloomberg noted.
Anthropic is in the midst of working on Project Glasswing, an AI-assisted security testing effort that more than 50 organizations are collaborating on. Anthropic released an update regarding the project last week.
The firm's latest AI model, Claude Opus 4.8, aims to deliver improved performance and new controls for customers and developers, the company announced this week.
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