Google’s effort to supply Anthropic with AI chips is becoming a financial-engineering story as much as a hardware story.
The Decoder, citing Financial Times reporting, says Google, Broadcom, Morgan Stanley, Apollo, Blackstone and crypto-mining companies are involved in a structure that would give Anthropic access to $35 billion worth of Google TPUs. A special-purpose vehicle buys the chips with outside investor money, while Anthropic leases the hardware.
The arrangement is designed to keep much of the hardware risk off the balance sheets of the companies involved. Google already faces heavy capital spending, Broadcom does not want to tie up capital in the chips it resells, and Anthropic reportedly lacks the credit profile to buy the systems directly.
The bigger implication is that AI infrastructure expansion is leaning on complex financing, not only cloud contracts and chip orders. If future revenue falls short, the risk may sit with the investors and counterparties that funded the compute buildout.