The four firms announced the deal on Monday, Oct. 26. Anthropic will not buy the hardware itself. A new company set up for the deal will use the money to buy Broadcom's AI chips and networking gear and lease them to Anthropic. Deliveries are expected to start in 2027.
The loans come in two tiers. If the deal runs into trouble, the first tier is repaid before the second. Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley are arranging the first-tier loans, and Blackstone alone has committed to fund the second tier, at least the part pledged so far. Broadcom has also promised support tied to what the used hardware is worth, for an amount equal to the first-tier loans.
The lenders say the deal is part of a chip agreement Broadcom announced earlier. In April, Broadcom said that from 2027 Anthropic would get, through Broadcom, computing capacity built on Google's TPU chips, which Broadcom develops and supplies for Google. TPUs are one of the kinds of hardware Anthropic uses to train and run Claude. Broadcom said then that how much of that capacity Anthropic uses depends on Anthropic's continued commercial success.
Anthropic's filing to sell shares to the public, released the same day, shows how big its Broadcom chip leases already are. Rent over the life of its five-year leases with Broadcom adds up to about $161.2 billion, not counting interest, paid every three months and usually starting once the equipment is ready for use. Neither side can cancel them except in a default, such as a missed payment. The filing does not say how much of that rent is for the hardware the new $63 billion buys.
For its biggest Broadcom lease, signed in March with about $125.2 billion of rent not counting interest, Anthropic can also borrow up to $42 billion, if needed, to cover rent payments. It would do that by selling IOUs to Broadcom or to a finance firm Broadcom picks with Anthropic's agreement, and the holder can swap them for Anthropic shares. Its right to borrow depends on meeting conditions, including on how fast its sales grow, set well below the growth it has had so far, and Anthropic says it does not expect to borrow any of it before its share sale.
The firms have not said what interest the loans carry or how the $63 billion splits between the two tiers. According to a news report, the first tier comes to about $43.5 billion, about 69% of the total. It is also not yet clear how much of Anthropic's planned computing power these loans will pay for.