Broadcom to lend Anthropic up to $42bn for its chips, Reuters reports

Broadcom has agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42bn to help pay for its AI infrastructure, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing Anthropic’s IPO prospectus. The loan could cover about a third of the $125.2bn Anthropic has committed to a five-year lease of tensor processing units (TPUs), the AI chips Google designs with Broadcom.

Echo Wang, Milana Vinn and Max A. Cherney reported the details for Reuters, which has reviewed the filing. TNW has not seen the prospectus and has not independently verified the report. Broadcom did not comment and Anthropic declined to comment, Reuters said.

How the loan works

The money would come through convertible notes, which could convert into Anthropic shares. Broadcom can also name a financing partner. Anthropic said in the filing that it does not expect any notes to be sold before its IPO.

Anthropic put cash into a restricted account for Broadcom’s benefit in April 2026, according to the filing. It may have to add more in certain circumstances.

That same month, Anthropic announced an expanded deal with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity, starting in 2027. In August, Bloomberg reported that Broadcom was seeking more than $60bn in debt to fund chips for Anthropic.

‘Potential conflicts of interest’

Anthropic says in the prospectus that Broadcom’s double role, as a hardware supplier and a financing partner, creates “potential conflicts of interest”. These could affect its access to the computing power it needs. Broadcom’s decisions on pricing and hardware could also limit how much infrastructure it can buy.

The filing also warns that some payment or performance defaults could make much of its lease obligations due at once. In that case, Anthropic could make only limited use of the $42bn facility to cover them.

Anthropic is on course to become Broadcom’s largest compute customer in 2027, according to Reuters. Broadcom projects AI chip revenue of about $115bn in fiscal 2027 and $230bn in fiscal 2028.

Following Nvidia’s lead

The deal mirrors Nvidia, which has used its balance sheet to support sales of its chips. This week, the Financial Times reported that Nvidia had talked to insurers about loans backed by its chips.

“Nvidia is putting in place a massive amount of its balance sheet, and Broadcom is having to follow suit,” Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg told Reuters.

Others see risk in how much of the AI build-out rests on a few companies.

“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 that’s happened,” Robert Leitao, managing partner of Rothschild & Co, told Reuters.

Anthropic’s prospectus has already shown that the company lost $42bn in 2025, as its revenue grew 12-fold. Its IPO could value it at $2tn, Reuters reported.