What Changed
Broadcom is negotiating more than $60 billion in fresh debt to fund an AI chip financing arrangement tied to customers including Anthropic, with the total package potentially swelling to roughly $100 billion once every piece is counted, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg News. The borrowing underscores how central the chipmaker has become to financing the AI buildout rather than simply supplying silicon to it. The reported debt raise traces back to a June agreement between Broadcom, Apollo Global Management, and Blackstone to fund a $35 billion expansion of Anthropic's computing capacity as part of a partnership intended to enable more than 20 gigawatts of AI compute by 2028.
Scale of the AI Chip Business Being Financed
The financing is being layered on top of a fast-growing AI chip business that Broadcom has built around custom application-specific integrated circuits for hyperscalers. AI semiconductor revenue reached $10.8 billion in the second quarter, an annualized run rate close to $43 billion, and management has said it has line of sight to more than $100 billion in AI chip revenue alone by 2027, a figure that would dwarf the company's $64 billion in total revenue for 2025. Broadcom also extended its relationship with Alphabet in April under a five-year deal covering future generations of Google's Tensor Processing Unit along with the networking gear needed to wire them into data centers, with new client orders expected to come online next year.
Market Reaction and Credit Signals
Broadcom's shares edged higher on the day the financing was reported, ticking up alongside the broader market even as peer Marvell Technology fell about 6% after Alphabet disclosed a new custom-chip agreement and a warrant for nearly 59 million Marvell shares, a dilution event that overshadowed that rival's deal rally. The contrast highlighted how investors are parsing which chip partners benefit from hyperscaler spending. Separately, Broadcom's credit-default swaps widened sharply as news of the off-balance-sheet financing circulated, reflecting investor concern about the size and structure of the new obligations.
What Remains Uncertain
The exact size, timing, and final structure of the debt package have not been confirmed by Broadcom, and the $100 billion ceiling reflects the upper end of what people familiar with the talks described to Bloomberg. It also remains unclear how much of the new borrowing will sit directly on Broadcom's balance sheet versus being arranged through the Apollo and Blackstone partnership framework, or how the credit-market response will evolve as terms are firmed up.
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