Kroll Bond Rating Agency has assigned Anthropic a BB+ credit rating with a positive outlook, one notch below investment grade, ahead of the artificial intelligence company's expected initial public offering in November. The rating applies to about $4.4 billion in subordinated debt, part of a $35 billion financing package led by Apollo Global Management. Broadcom guarantees the senior portion of the package. The subordinated debt carries an 8.5% interest rate, while the senior debt carries a 5.75% rate.
Wall Street banks are preparing an additional $60 billion in financing to support Anthropic's purchase of custom AI chips. The package includes $18 billion in subordinated debt tied to computing infrastructure built with Google and Broadcom, as well as up to $42 billion in convertible notes for chip leasing. Kroll based its view on limited financial information, including revenue, adjusted operating income and internal forecasts, and used a risk scoring system rather than a full financial model.
At an October 14 investor presentation, Anthropic reported third-quarter revenue of $16.8 billion, up about 45% from $11.6 billion in the second quarter and $4.7 billion in the first. Growth slowed sequentially from the more than doubling seen between the first and second quarters. Reuters reported that some investors have discussed a valuation of about $1.5 trillion, down from earlier expectations of roughly $2 trillion. In May, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion post-money valuation.
Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows 2025 revenue of nearly $4.6 billion and an operating loss of more than $8 billion. About $34 billion of a reported $42 billion net loss came from an accounting charge tied to convertible financing instruments. The company has committed at least $518 billion over roughly a decade for cloud services, computing power and infrastructure.
Wedbush Securities analyst Matt Bryson cautioned against interpreting Anthropic's results as evidence of slowing AI spending. He said annualising revenue trends over very short periods can be misleading and noted rising GPU rental prices and no indications of slowing hardware demand. Still, concerns over debt-funded AI infrastructure have pressured shares and bonds of Nvidia-backed data centre operator CoreWeave, and some data-centre companies have delayed or pulled planned public offerings.
