❯ Anthropic offers Blackstone a 10%-plus yield on $60 billion of TPU debt, with Blackstone set to put in $9 billion

Double-digit interest for computeAccording to Startup Fortune, citing an October 16 Financial Times report, Anthropic has offered Blackstone a coupon of more than 10% to invest $9 billion in the junior portion of a $60 billion debt package. Broadcom arranged the package, which pays for Anthropic’s lease of Google TPU chips. The terms are still under discussion and the deal has not closed.

How big the lease isTPUs are Google’s in-house AI chips. The report says Anthropic’s IPO filing discloses a five-year TPU lease worth $125.2 billion. A $42 billion senior loan led by banks covers about a third of it. The junior slice is riskier and paid back later, so it carries a higher rate; similarly rated borrowers pay roughly 7% in public bond markets, the report notes.

Investors run the numbersPrivate credit firms such as Blackstone get returns above public-market levels in exchange for betting that an AI company can keep paying rent. Over the same period, The Information said on X that Anthropic’s revenue growth is slowing and some prospective investors were disappointed by its latest numbers. The slower revenue grows, the more these long leases and high-yield debts weigh on cash flow.

▮ SIGNALFrontier labs’ compute bills are now large enough to be sold in tranches, and paying double-digit interest on the junior slice shows financing costs have become part of the model race.