The chipmaker is simultaneously supplier, lender and equipment lessor to the AI lab ahead of its IPO, a tangle of mutual dependence that highlights both the scale of the AI buildout and the risks Wall Street is watching.
Among the many partnerships laid out in Anthropic's IPO prospectus, one stands apart: its relationship with chipmaker Broadcom. The tie-up reaches across computing supply, equipment leasing and financing, giving Broadcom a central role in building the AI lab's infrastructure. That sets it apart from partners such as Amazon, which mainly supply cloud capacity and distribution for Anthropic's Claude model.
The filing reveals that Broadcom has agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to fund infrastructure spending. In return, Anthropic is set to become the biggest customer of Broadcom's core chip design business next year. The arrangement is a textbook case of the circular spending that has fed scepticism among investors, even as Anthropic prepares a listing that could value it at around $2 trillion.
"It feels that there's quite a concentrated bet right now on two companies being able to generate enough revenues to support all the financing," said Robert Leitao, managing partner at Rothschild & Co.
How the financing works
Under the terms, Broadcom may name a financing partner, and the debt instruments could be converted into Anthropic shares. The company said it does not expect any notes to be sold before the IPO is completed. The convertible note could cover roughly a third of Anthropic's $125.2 billion commitment to a five-year lease of tensor processing unit (TPU) computing capacity.
Alphabet's Google and Broadcom have jointly developed several generations of TPUs. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded partnership with both firms that will give it access to several gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity starting in 2027.
For Broadcom, the move echoes a strategy rival Nvidia has pursued in recent years: using a strong balance sheet to support chip sales. "Nvidia is putting in place a massive amount of its balance sheet, and Broadcom is having to follow suit," said Jay Goldberg, an analyst at Seaport Research.
Risks flagged in the filing
Anthropic acknowledged that Broadcom's dual role as hardware supplier and financing partner creates potential conflicts of interest that could affect its access to the computing power it needs. It also cautioned that Broadcom's pricing and hardware decisions could limit its ability to secure enough infrastructure.
Linked to the convertible debt, Anthropic said it placed cash in a restricted account for Broadcom's benefit in April 2026 and may have to add more in certain circumstances. It warned that some payment or performance defaults could make a large share of its lease obligations immediately payable, while restricting its use of the $42 billion facility to cover them.
Broadcom did not comment, and Anthropic declined to comment. Anthropic is expected to be Broadcom's largest compute customer in 2027, a year in which Broadcom projects about $115 billion in AI semiconductor revenue, rising to $230 billion in fiscal 2028.
