Broadcom in advanced talks with Apollo, Blackstone for $35–55B private‑credit package to shore up chip deal

Private credit is showing up in the chip business now — and at absurd scale. Broadcom is in advanced talks with Apollo, Blackstone, and other lenders on roughly $35 billion of financing for its AI chip push. If it closes anywhere near that size, this would rank among the biggest private-credit deals ever, and it says something bigger than “Broadcom needs cash.” It says AI capacity is starting to get financed like infrastructure. (bloomberg.com) (anthropic.com) ### Why does Broadcom need that much money? Because Broadcom is no longer just selling chips off a shelf. It is increasingly in the business of designing custom AI silicon and helping lock in long-term compute supply for giant customers. (bloomberg.com) That takes upfront money — for design, manufacturing commitments, packaging, networking gear, and the long lead times that come with advanced chips. ### What changed recently? The clearest clue came on April 6, when Broadcom expanded its AI partnerships with Google and Anthropic. Broadcom said it would keep developing future Google TPUs, and Anthropic said it had signed for multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity starting in 2027. (bloomberg.com) Broadcom’s own disclosures put Anthropic’s share at about 3.5 gigawatts. That is not a pilot project — that is industrial-scale compute reservation. ### Why use private credit instead of normal bonds? Speed and flexibility, basically. A deal this size through banks or public debt markets would be slower, more exposed to market windows, and more constrained by standard underwriting. Private-credit firms can assemble huge pools of capital fast and tailor terms around a weird asset — future AI-chip output tied to long-term customer commitments. (bloomberg.com) That matters when the bottleneck is not demand, but how fast you can secure supply. ### What is Broadcom really financing here? Not just “R&D.” The real object is the whole chain that turns a chip roadmap into usable compute. In AI, customers increasingly want guaranteed access years ahead, not vague promises that capacity will appear. (anthropic.com) So the financed asset starts to look like a bundle: chip design, foundry slots, packaging, interconnect, and contracted offtake from hyperscalers or model companies. Broadcom sits in the middle of that bundle. ### Is there a stress point underneath this? Yes — financing risk is already showing up in Broadcom’s AI deals. A separate report this month said Broadcom’s custom-chip project with OpenAI hit an $18 billion snag, with Broadcom wanting Microsoft to commit to buying roughly 40% of the chips in the first phase. (bloomberg.com) Whether every detail of that negotiation holds or not, the message is clear: even huge AI customers do not want to carry all the risk alone, and suppliers do not either. ### Why is that a big shift? Because this starts to look less like classic semiconductor sales and more like project finance. Think power plants, pipelines, or toll roads — assets with giant upfront costs and long-term contracted demand. (bloomberg.com) The analogy is not perfect, but it is close enough to matter. AI labs need compute. Cloud platforms need differentiated chips. Someone has to front the capital before the revenue fully arrives. Private credit wants exactly that kind of long-duration, cash-flow-backed exposure. ### Who benefits if this works? Broadcom gets room to scale without leaning entirely on its own balance sheet. Apollo and Blackstone get a marquee financing tied to one of the hottest parts of tech. (theinformation.com) And customers like Google or Anthropic get a better shot at locking in future capacity before the next shortage hits. The catch is that everyone becomes more tied to a few giant counterparties and very long planning cycles. ### Bottom line The interesting part is not just a possible $35 billion loan. It is what the loan is for. AI chips are turning into reserved infrastructure, and Broadcom is trying to fund them that way. (bloomberg.com)