Broadcom has agreed to provide up to $42 billion in financing to Anthropic, the AI lab preparing for a public listing that could value it at around $2 trillion, according to details disclosed in Anthropic's IPO prospectus.
The facility may cover roughly one-third of Anthropic's $125.2 billion five-year commitment to lease tensor processing unit capacity. The debt instruments tied to the arrangement could eventually be converted into Anthropic equity, and Broadcom may designate another financing partner. Anthropic also said it does not expect any notes to be sold before its IPO closes.
The relationship extends beyond lending. Broadcom supplies compute hardware, leases equipment, and now acts as a financing partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded partnership with Google and Broadcom that gives it access to multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity starting in 2027. Anthropic's CFO Krishna Rao called it the company's most significant compute commitment to date.
Broadcom expects Anthropic to become its largest customer in its core chip-design business in 2027. It projects AI semiconductor revenue of about $115 billion in fiscal 2027 and roughly $230 billion in fiscal 2028. In its fiscal third quarter, Broadcom reported AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion, up 221% year over year.
Analysts compared the move to Nvidia's use of its balance sheet to support chip sales. Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg said Broadcom is following that playbook. Rothschild & Co managing partner Robert Leitao warned of concentration risk, saying there is a bet that just two companies can generate enough revenue to support all the financing involved. Anthropic itself flagged potential conflicts of interest from Broadcom's dual role as supplier and lender, noting that pricing, hardware decisions, and defaults could affect its access to compute and the lending facility.
In June, Broadcom also launched an AI financing platform with Apollo and Blackstone, beginning with a $35 billion transaction supporting more than one gigawatt of Anthropic compute and targeting more than 20 gigawatts through 2028.
