Anthropic's Chip Plan Would Offer Blackstone Funds Yields Above 10%

Anthropic's proposed chip-financing package would offer Blackstone funds yields above 10%, while testing investor demand for debt tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure at a $60 billion scale.

The plan, called Project North Star, would support Anthropic's procurement of about 1.5 gigawatts of custom semiconductors developed by Google. The chips are TPUs.

Blackstone funds would invest $9 billion in debt backed by Anthropic's chip lease payments over five years. That amount would represent half of an $18 billion subordinated-loan tranche in the broader financing.

The $9 billion commitment applies to that $18 billion slice, not the entire $60 billion package. The overall borrowing plan and the loan tranche are separate parts of the structure: one is the proposed total, the other is the portion in which Blackstone funds would participate.

The transaction is expected to become the largest chip-financing deal to date. Its scale would make the proposed borrowing a gauge of whether investors will finance artificial intelligence infrastructure through debt tied to chip lease payments.