(Bloomberg) -- Blackstone Inc. has held early discussions with investors to gauge interest in a second mega debt package to finance Anthropic PBC's use of chips from Alphabet Inc.'s Google.
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One initial proposal was for at least $36 billion of debt, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The details, including the size and structure and even whether Blackstone will ultimately lead the financing, are being discussed and may change, the people said, asking not to be identified because they're not authorized to speak publicly.
If it were finalized at around that size, the deal would exceed the $35 billion of debt lined up by Apollo Global Management Inc. and Blackstone roughly two months ago to fund Anthropic's lease of Google's custom chips. That package was one of the biggest private credit transactions in history. Representatives for Blackstone, Apollo, Anthropic and Google declined to comment.
As Silicon Valley races to build AI infrastructure, leading firms have struck complicated and often circular deals with one another in a bid to secure access. Google was one of Anthropic's earliest investors, repeatedly buying equity and now increasingly backstopping the financing that underpins data centers for the startup.
The potential new round of financing comes on the heels of Anthropic's confidential US IPO filing, as it attempts to beat rival OpenAI to a public-market debut. The Claude creator plans to lease powerful computer chips at five data centers with help from Google as part of the earlier debt deal.
Tech companies are tapping every corner of the credit markets to meet AI's unprecedented capital demands, forcing Wall Street to engineer novel debt structures to keep pace. Some companies recently have also been forced to pay hefty yields on new borrowings amid concerns that AI investments won't pay off.
Click here for Bloomberg News's Global AI Infrastructure Debt Tracker
Broadcom Inc., Apollo and Blackstone struck a partnership called AI XPV Platform this year to help finance compute infrastructure for leading AI companies including Anthropic. The $35 billion debt deal that wrapped up a couple of months ago was the first part of that funding.