Anthropic offers Blackstone 10% to fund $60B of Google TPUs

WIRE · HYPERSCALERS · US · Data as at 18 Oct 2026

Anthropic is offering Blackstone funds a 10% coupon to take $9 billion of junior debt in a planned $60 billion financing for about 1.5 GW of Google's TPU chips, the Financial Times reported on 16 October 2026. The package, called Project North Star, would be the largest chip financing yet. Its $42 billion senior layer is guaranteed by Broadcom, which builds the TPUs with Google. In June, Anthropic's junior chip debt priced at about 8.5%. On the hyperscalers layer, Google's chip has become something a customer borrows against, and the price of that borrowing went up, not down.

What happened

Why cash cares

A TPU used to be something you rented by the hour inside Google Cloud. Here it is a leased asset with its own debt stack. Anthropic signs a five-year lease, lenders fund the chips against that lease, and the chip's maker stands behind the safest layer. Google's design wins either way: the chips get built and installed whether the money comes from Google's balance sheet or from Blackstone's funds.

For how a TPU differs from a GPU, see TPU vs GPU.

The cost is what moved. Our arithmetic: $60 billion for 1.5 GW is about $40 billion per gigawatt of chips, before the halls and the power. The junior layer is 30% of the package. Blackstone's $9 billion at 10% is about $900 million a year in coupon. That 10% is 1.5 points above June's junior debt and more than 3 points above the roughly 7% the FT says similarly rated borrowers pay in public markets.

So the lender most exposed to Anthropic is asking more, four months after the last deal, while the amount being borrowed has grown.

Figure: The chip debt got bigger, and the riskiest layer got dearer. What was reported about each deal, June and October 2026.

The second-order read

Who gets paid. Broadcom first: it co-designs and supplies the TPUs, and Reuters reported that Anthropic is set to become the largest customer of its chip design business next year. Google, whose TPU design this is and which holds at least $111.1 billion of separate Anthropic commitments. Blackstone's funds, at 10% or more. The banks arranging the stack.

Who carries the risk. The junior lenders, who lose first and are secured only on lease payments. Broadcom, which guarantees $42 billion of debt that pays for its own chips. Anthropic, whose Broadcom leases can't be cancelled except on default.

Who waits. The buyers of the second $9 billion junior slice, who will set the next price. Whoever hosts and powers 1.5 GW of chips, not named in the reports.

Stuck step. The price of first-loss money. Chips and halls can be ordered. The layer that absorbs losses has to be sold to a small group of private lenders, and they just raised the price.

Two cautions

These are press reports based on people familiar with the deal and documents the FT has seen. The deal has not closed, the all-in yield is not disclosed, and Anthropic did not immediately respond to the FT.

The $42 billion senior layer matches the size of the Broadcom financing in Anthropic's IPO filing, as reported by Reuters on 1 October. The reports don't say whether they are the same money. Don't add them together.

What to watch

• The second $9 billion junior slice, due in the coming months. A coupon below 10% would mean June to October was a one-off. Above it would mean the price of chip debt is still climbing.
• Alphabet's third-quarter results on 28 October, for Google Cloud backlog and anything said about TPUs sold or leased outside Google's own cloud.
• Anthropic's IPO filing going public, which would show the lease terms and the cash behind them.

Read: What does Google do?, GPU financing explained, and Broadcom's Hock Tan: capital, not chips, is AI's next bottleneck

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Not investment advice. Do your own research. The cost per gigawatt, the 30% junior share, the $900 million annual coupon and the point gaps between deals are our arithmetic from the reports below.

References

1. Financial Times, "Anthropic offers Blackstone double-digit yield in latest chip financing", 16 Oct 2026. Project North Star's size, layers, Broadcom guarantee, Blackstone's share and coupon, and the comparison with public bond yields.
2. Investing.com, "Anthropic offers Blackstone over 10% yield in $60B AI chip financing - FT reports", 16 Oct 2026. The FT's terms as reported, including the five-year lease security.
3. Dealroom News, "Anthropic secured highest junk credit rating in June", 16 Oct 2026. Summary of the FT's report on the BB+ rating, the 8.5% junior and 5.75% senior pricing in June.
4. Apollo, "Apollo Leads $35 Billion Capital Solution for Broadcom AI XPV Platform", 9 Jun 2026. The June deal, with Blackstone as a partner, for more than 1 GW of Anthropic compute.
5. Reuters, "Broadcom to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to lease its chips, filing says", 1 Oct 2026. The $125.2 billion five-year TPU lease commitment and the Broadcom facility.
6. Reuters, "Anthropic's $518 billion AI buildout hinges largely on deals that cannot be canceled, filing shows", 29 Sep 2026. The $111.1 billion Google commitment and non-cancellable Broadcom leases.
7. Alphabet, "Alphabet Announces Date of Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call", 6 Oct 2026. Results on 28 October.