Apollo & Blackstone close $35B SPV to finance Anthropic's Google TPU acquisition, largest chip-backed debt deal

Apollo Global Management and Blackstone finalized a $35 billion structured debt financing on June 5, 2026, to fund Anthropic's acquisition of Google's custom tensor processing units (TPUs). The deal, structured through a special-purpose vehicle (SPV), ranks among the largest private credit transactions ever assembled. The SPV borrows funds, uses equity capital to purchase Google TPUs developed in partnership with Broadcom, and leases the chips back to Anthropic for deployment across five data centers in New York, Texas, Louisiana, Indiana, and another undisclosed site. Lease payments from Anthropic service the debt, keeping the $35 billion obligation entirely off Anthropic's balance sheet.

The $35 billion is divided into three tranches: $6 billion A1 notes (T+100bps, priced to banks), $24 billion A2 notes (5.75% coupon), and $4.5 billion B notes (8.5% coupon). Broadcom, which co-develops the TPUs with Google, provides residual value support agreements on the senior A1 and A2 tranches, effectively guaranteeing chip retention value and allowing those senior portions to price like investment-grade instruments despite Anthropic's pre-IPO status. Google provides payment guarantees on the leased capacity at all five sites, further de-risking the arrangement.

For architects and practitioners, this deal signals a new financing era where chip-backed debt structures are replacing traditional capex funding. The arrangement lets Anthropic maintain balance-sheet flexibility while securing compute capacity ahead of an expected IPO in late 2026. Morgan Stanley advised the deal and is also participating as a lender to syndicated investors. This precedent will likely spawn hundreds of similar SPV deals across the industry—Meta, SpaceX, and others are building variant structures. The deal underscores that AI infrastructure financing has shifted from equity-only funding to sophisticated debt engineering backed by hardware residual values.