Banks working for Broadcom have begun raising $60 billion in debt to finance AI chips for Anthropic and other customers, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The move copies a vendor-financing playbook Nvidia has already scaled to more than $500 billion.

The structure is unusually large and unusually specific. Banks are preparing to send syndication letters to investors for a $42 billion Class A senior-secured tranche, according to Bloomberg. Blackstone leads a separate $18 billion Class B junior tranche, contributing $9 billion from its own funds and planning to sell the remaining $9 billion to other investors. The people describing the financing said the deal has not yet been announced.

A day before the Bloomberg report, Reuters reported that a filing showed Broadcom would lend Anthropic up to $42 billion so the AI company could lease Broadcom's chips. Broadcom declined to comment.

Why is Broadcom lending its customers money?

The arrangement reflects Broadcom's push to sell more chips and data-center equipment and compete with Nvidia. Under this model, Broadcom helps finance customer purchases of its own silicon — converting its balance sheet and its banking relationships into a sales channel.

Anthropic is expected to become Broadcom's largest customer next year, Barron's reported. Securing that revenue with up to $42 billion in lease-supporting credit effectively locks in demand for Broadcom's custom AI accelerators while shifting the financing burden onto debt markets.

The financing has been coming together for weeks. People familiar with the talks said in August that the package would help Anthropic and other companies obtain chips and other AI infrastructure.

How does this compare with Nvidia's approach?

Nvidia set the template. In August, it announced a partnership with six large financial firms, including Blackstone, to raise more than $500 billion for AI — part of which funds customer purchases of Nvidia chips. Broadcom's $60 billion package follows the same logic at roughly one-eighth the scale so far.

The parallel runs deeper than structure. Blackstone already holds a stake in Anthropic, an investment that has helped increase returns at Blackstone's private-equity fund for wealthy investors, according to Bloomberg. The same firm is now lending against the chips Anthropic will lease — concentrating credit exposure, equity exposure and infrastructure risk in one relationship web.

What does the debt pile mean for the AI buildout?

The Broadcom package adds to the hundreds of billions of dollars in debt already raised for AI infrastructure. Most of that financing has gone to data centers, but deals funding chips and servers specifically have become more common.

Investors on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley are watching the deal closely, amid public opposition to new data-center construction and mounting concern about how much the AI industry is spending overall.

The stakes are straightforward for Broadcom. If Anthropic's compute demand holds, the vendor-financed leases convert into a durable revenue stream from what will be its largest customer. If AI spending slows, the debt sits against chips whose resale value is far less certain than the loans imply — a question lenders syndicating the $42 billion tranche will now have to price.