Broadcom has agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to finance AI infrastructure spending, according to Anthropic's IPO prospectus reviewed by Reuters on October 1. The chipmaker's relationship with Anthropic spans compute supply, equipment leasing and financing — giving Broadcom a central role in the AI lab's buildout that sets it apart from other partners like Amazon, which mainly provides cloud infrastructure and distribution for Claude.

The financing would take the form of convertible notes covering roughly a third of the $125.2 billion commitment Anthropic has made for a five-year lease of TPU computing capacity. Broadcom could designate a financing partner, and the debt could convert into Anthropic shares — though the lab says it doesn't expect any notes to be sold before it completes its IPO. In turn, Anthropic stands to become the largest customer in Broadcom's chip-design business next year, a prime example of the reciprocal spending that has animated AI skeptics on Wall Street — even as Anthropic readies an offering that could value it at $2 trillion. "It feels that there's quite a concentrated bet right now on two companies being able to generate enough revenues to support all the financing that's happened," said Robert Leitao of Rothschild & Co.

The tie runs deep: Google and Broadcom have collaborated on several generations of TPUs, and Anthropic announced in April an expanded partnership with both that gives it access to multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU compute starting in 2027. The filing also documents the staggering scale of the compute race — Anthropic expects to spend at least $518 billion over a decade on AI infrastructure with six partners, about 80% of it locked in and non-cancelable. The supplier financing the demand for its own hardware is no longer an edge case; it's the business model.

Sources