TL;DR

Broadcom has committed to lending Anthropic as much as $42bn to pay for computing infrastructure, according to a Reuters exclusive on Thursday 1 October based on Anthropic’s IPO prospectus. The debt could later turn into Anthropic shares. Anthropic itself warns that Broadcom’s combined roles as supplier and financier create “potential conflicts of interest”.

What the filing shows

Most of Anthropic’s big-tech partners play one part. Amazon, for example, mainly supplies cloud capacity and distribution for Claude. Broadcom, Reuters reports, plays three: it supplies compute, leases equipment and now finances the build-out.

Under the arrangement, Broadcom may bring in another lender, and the notes Anthropic issues could be converted into equity. Anthropic does not expect any to be sold before its listing. According to Reuters, the facility could cover around a third of the $125.2bn Anthropic has committed to renting TPU chips (tensor processing units) over five years. Google and Broadcom have worked together on several TPU generations, and in April Anthropic widened its deal with both firms, securing several gigawatts of newer TPU capacity from 2027.

The traffic runs both ways. Reuters says Anthropic is expected to be the biggest buyer of Broadcom compute in 2027, while Broadcom forecasts AI chip revenue of about $115bn in fiscal 2027, doubling to $230bn a year later.

The risks Anthropic lists

The prospectus warns that Broadcom’s pricing and hardware decisions could affect Anthropic’s ability to secure enough compute. In April Anthropic set aside cash in a ring-fenced account that benefits Broadcom, and it may need to top that up. Some defaults on payments or performance could bring a large share of its lease obligations due at once, while restricting its use of the $42bn facility to meet them.

Neither company would comment to Reuters.

Circular money

Analysts see a familiar pattern. Seaport Research’s Jay Goldberg said Broadcom is “having to follow suit” after Nvidia used its balance sheet to support chip sales. Robert Leitao, a managing partner at Rothschild & Co, worried about “quite a concentrated bet right now on two companies” generating enough revenue to service all the financing. In our view, when a supplier lends a customer the money to buy its own products, both sets of accounts look healthier than the underlying demand may justify.

The prospectus has already drawn attention for warning that AI could pose existential risks. This disclosure adds a financial one.

Looking forward

Reuters says the listing could value Anthropic at $2tn. For UK businesses building on Claude, the practical question is resilience, since Anthropic itself says one supplier’s pricing and hardware choices could affect how much compute it can get. Watch the final prospectus for how much of the facility is drawn, and for any change to the default terms before the shares start trading.