Wall Street just wrote one of the biggest checks the AI industry has ever seen, and it wasn’t even an equity investment.
Apollo Global Management and Blackstone finalized a $35 billion debt financing package for Anthropic on June 5, 2026. The deal is designed to help the AI company acquire Google’s custom tensor processing units, the specialized chips that power large-scale AI training and inference.
This isn’t a traditional investment where Apollo and Blackstone buy a stake in Anthropic. It’s a structured debt deal, one of the largest private credit transactions ever assembled, that lets Anthropic lease chips through a specially designated vehicle rather than tying up its own equity capital on hardware.
How the deal actually works
Anthropic gets access to the computing power it needs without the balance sheet hit of buying chips outright.
The financing is split into three tranches, each targeting the acquisition of Google TPUs. Broadcom provided residual-value guarantees on the senior tranches, backstopping the deal by guaranteeing that the chips will retain a certain value, which makes the debt less risky for Apollo and Blackstone.
The deal evolved from earlier efforts in May 2026, when the companies were working to secure approximately $36 billion in funding. The final package landed at $35 billion.
Anthropic’s funding spree in context
In May 2026, just weeks before the debt deal closed, Anthropic completed a $65 billion Series H funding round. That round valued the company at a post-money valuation of $965 billion.
The company is also reportedly advancing plans for an initial public offering.
Anthropic also launched an enterprise-oriented AI services venture with Blackstone and additional partners in early May 2026. Blackstone is therefore building a multi-layered relationship with Anthropic that spans debt and enterprise partnerships.
What this means for investors
The chip-backed debt with Broadcom guarantees gives Apollo and Blackstone downside protection alongside exposure to AI’s growth.
The deal is explicitly positioned to enhance US leadership in AI infrastructure amid global competition. The risk is that AI hardware depreciates faster than anyone expects, which is precisely why Broadcom’s residual-value guarantees matter so much to the deal’s structure.