Broadcom guarantees chip resale value in a $63 billion Anthropic lease from BofA, Citi and Morgan Stanley
Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley will arrange the senior debt of a vehicle that buys Broadcom XPU chips and leases them to Anthropic, with first deliveries in 2027. Broadcom is also promising to cover the chips' resale value up to the senior debt's size, a promise that moves the residual risk onto the chipmaker.
Richard Tang · 3 min read
Broadcom+3.19% — Broadcom, up 3.19 percent today is guaranteeing the resale value of its own chips inside a $63 billion financing announced tonight by Bank of America+0.10% — Bank of America, up 0.10 percent today, Blackstone+0.79% — Blackstone, up 0.79 percent today, Citi+0.40% — Citi, up 0.40 percent today and Morgan Stanley+2.38% — Morgan Stanley, up 2.38 percent today 1. A new vehicle will buy Broadcom XPU accelerators, its custom AI chips, and lease them to Anthropic$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B, the AI lab behind the Claude models 12. The three banks arrange the first lien; Blackstone, the asset manager with nearly $1.4 trillion under management, is the sole committed second-lien lender 1. Deliveries of the compute capacity start in calendar 2027 1.
The size is the headline. The story sits one line lower in the release: Broadcom is providing residual value support to the vehicle for an amount equivalent to the first lien portion 1. Read plainly, the seller of the collateral is promising what that collateral will be worth later.
The senior lenders' claim runs through Broadcom
A special purpose vehicle exists to own the chips and borrow against them: the release describes committed financing to support the purchase of Broadcom XPU AI accelerators and networking solutions to be leased to Anthropic 1.
How that borrowing is meant to be repaid, and what the chips are assumed to be worth at the end of the lease, the release does not say 1. If a generation of XPUs loses value faster than the debt pays down, the senior lenders' recovery is capped at Broadcom's promise, and that promise is sized to the first lien 1.
The banks are underwriting Hock Tan, Broadcom's chief executive 1, as much as Anthropic. Broadcom has already agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion directly, in debt that can convert into Anthropic shares 2.
The S-1 explains why the lenders wanted the promise
Anthropic's IPO prospectus, filed the same day, shows a tenant that can pay 3. First-half revenue reached $16.3 billion 3. The $80.7 billion net loss is mostly noncash charges on convertible instruments, not cash leaving the business, and the company posted its first quarterly operating profit in the second quarter 3.
Against that sit more than $500 billion of infrastructure commitments over roughly a decade, while many customers pay by usage 3. The filing names the strategy Anthropic Direct: Anthropic stands up its own data centers and leases the compute back from partners, with those commitments starting around the end of September 4. The new vehicle is the financing arm of that shift.
The new $63 billion lease joins an already large Anthropic compute stack
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Cash and short-term investments (June 2026) | $131.7B |
| Five-year TPU lease commitment | $125.2B |
| New SPV lease financing (26 Oct) | $63B |
| Broadcom credit line to Anthropic | $42B |
Investors are already buying insurance against this outcome
Lucent Technologies, the telecom-equipment maker, spurred its late-1990s sales by lending money to its own customers 5. According to Fortune, money from the loans began to appear on Lucent's income statement as new revenue while the dicey debt sat on its balance sheet as an allegedly solid asset 5. The stock bottomed at 55 cents in October 2002 5. The market is hedging the AI version of this trade.
Weekly volume in credit default swaps, contracts that compensate buyers when a borrower defaults, on AI-linked names including Broadcom and Nvidia+2.46% — Nvidia, up 2.46 percent today averaged more than $9 billion in September 6. In July the weekly figure was under $2 billion 6. The count comes from Morgan Stanley's research desk, one of the three banks arranging tonight's first lien 16, and we mapped that insurance build-up yesterday.
What to watch before the first chip ships
The compute demand in the filing is real, and the buildout deserves the capital now being put against it 3. What nobody has priced yet is how fast a generation of AI silicon depreciates against a lease that amortizes over years, because there is no used-XPU market to ask. Watch the swaps on Broadcom, one of the names in that basket 6, and any sign of a second-hand market, before the first deliveries in 2027 1. The structure itself says the lenders did not trust the collateral alone.
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