Anthropic Offers Blackstone Double-Digit Yield in $60 Billion Chip Financing

Anthropic is reportedly offering Blackstone a yield exceeding 10% on a portion of a massive $60 billion debt financing package, internally codenamed “Project North Star,” intended to fund its next significant acquisition of AI chips.

Project North Star Financing Details

Under the proposed structure, Blackstone would invest $9 billion in the junior debt tranche of the deal. Negotiations for this financing were ongoing around October 16-17, 2026. The financing is designed in layers, with different levels of risk and return. Senior debt, positioned at the top, carries the lowest risk as it is repaid first in case of default, yielding approximately 7%, according to research findings. The junior debt, which absorbs losses before senior lenders, is priced higher, justifying Blackstone’s yield of over 10%. Senior lenders are further protected by residual-value support from Broadcom, a mechanism tied to the value of the underlying hardware.

AI Chip Acquisition and Structure

The funds are earmarked for the procurement of approximately 1.5 gigawatts of tensor processing units (TPUs), Google’s custom AI chips. These chips will be acquired through a special-purpose vehicle (SPV). This SPV acts as a distinct corporate entity that owns the hardware and assumes the associated debt, allowing Anthropic to utilize the computing power without directly impacting its own balance sheet.

Previous Financing and Future Ambitions

This is not Anthropic’s first foray into private credit markets. In June 2026, the company secured a $35 billion arrangement with Apollo and Blackstone to finance roughly 1 gigawatt of compute capacity. At that time, Anthropic’s credit profile was rated one notch below investment grade. The overarching goal of this substantial borrowing is to achieve scale, with Anthropic targeting a compute capacity exceeding 20 GW by 2028.

The Rise of SPVs in AI Compute Financing

The SPV approach is emerging as a key strategy for AI companies to finance compute infrastructure. By transferring hardware ownership to a separate entity, lenders can secure loans against the physical assets themselves, rather than solely relying on the borrower’s creditworthiness. This collateralization is crucial for the senior debt tranches, as evidenced by Broadcom’s residual-value support, which assures lenders of the hardware’s value even if the primary borrower faces difficulties.

Strategic Advantages for Investors and Anthropic

For Blackstone, the investment offers an attractive yield that significantly outperforms the public high-yield market, in exchange for taking on junior debt in a pre-IPO AI company. For Anthropic, this financing structure provides the speed and scale needed to acquire substantial compute power without diluting existing equity holders. The SPV arrangement also effectively isolates the debt obligation from the company’s core financial statements.

Market Appetite for AI Debt

Research findings suggest that the “Project North Star” package reflects a robust investor appetite for AI-related debt. However, lenders are reportedly becoming more discerning about the capital expenditure plans they are willing to support. The significant commitment to Google’s TPUs, rather than the more commonly discussed GPUs, represents a notable endorsement of Google’s custom silicon for large-scale AI training and inference.