Analysis
Broadcom is in talks to raise as much as $100 billion in debt to finance custom AI chip production for Anthropic and other customers including OpenAI, Bloomberg reported Thursday, in what would be one of the largest private debt packages ever assembled for AI infrastructure. The talks involve multiple lenders, including Blackstone and Apollo, and center on a base package of more than $60 billion that could expand toward $100 billion depending on final demand.
How the deal is structured
The proposed financing splits into two tranches:
“Update (August 22, 2026): Pulse has follow-up coverage — Broadcom's AI Chip Debt Deal Narrows to $70B.”
- Senior secured debt -- roughly $60B to $70B, with Broadcom reportedly guaranteeing a portion itself
- Subordinated debt -- about $30B in junior debt that sits behind the senior tranche in a default
That structure lets Broadcom raise financing well beyond what its own balance sheet would otherwise support, while keeping much of the risk with outside lenders rather than shareholders.
This isn't Broadcom's first financing vehicle built around Anthropic specifically. In June, Broadcom, Anthropic and OpenAI launched a joint investment vehicle called the AI XPV Platform, which has already provided Anthropic with $35 billion in financing to fund data center construction -- separate from chip manufacturing. The same month, Broadcom and OpenAI unveiled a jointly designed inference accelerator called Jalapeño, giving Broadcom design wins with both of the two labs racing toward IPOs this year.
Why Anthropic gets the biggest slice
Anthropic is expected to account for more than 40% of the volume this new debt package would finance, a concentration that reflects how central custom silicon has become to Anthropic's compute strategy as it scales toward the $65 billion annualized revenue run rate Pulse covered last week, and as the company prepares an IPO it hopes will match SpaceX's record size. Custom ASICs from partners like Broadcom and Marvell -- which separately gave Google warrants on up to $12.2 billion of its own stock to lock in a similar multi-year chip relationship -- have become a parallel track to Nvidia GPUs for the highest-spending AI labs, and debt rather than equity is increasingly how that capacity gets financed.
The bigger debt picture
This single financing sits inside a much larger wave of AI-related borrowing. S&P Global counts $225 billion in bonds issued by hyperscalers and Nvidia-adjacent entities so far in 2026, putting the market on pace for a record year of AI-linked debt issuance. Separately, roughly $1.6 trillion in debt tied to five leading US AI hyperscalers has been structured through off-balance-sheet vehicles and disclosed only in financial-statement footnotes rather than as headline corporate debt -- a pattern that has drawn increasing scrutiny from bond investors worried about how concentrated AI capex risk has become across a small number of counterparties.
The counterweight
A financing package "in talks" is not a closed deal, and the final size, the split between senior and subordinated debt, and which lenders actually commit could all still change materially before signing -- Broadcom itself hasn't confirmed the numbers publicly. It's also worth separating announced financing capacity from actual chip deliveries: this debt package funds Broadcom's ability to build capacity for Anthropic and OpenAI, not a guarantee those chips ship on any particular schedule or that Anthropic's compute needs grow as fast as the financing assumes. If AI infrastructure demand growth decelerates before this debt is fully drawn and repaid, lenders holding the subordinated tranche in particular would be first to absorb any shortfall.
Update (August 22, 2026): Pulse has follow-up coverage — Americas Capital Crunch: Debt Collides With AI Spending.
Update (August 22, 2026): Pulse has follow-up coverage — Broadcom's AI Chip Debt Deal Narrows to $70B.