The structure deserves more attention than the total. A Broadcom-backed special-purpose vehicle is negotiating to raise $70 billion to $80 billion in debt to finance AI chip deals, including Anthropic's. [1] The senior tranche — roughly $45 billion, repaid first — sits ahead of a junior tranche of about $35 billion; the numbers remain fluid, and Bloomberg's earlier reporting floated up to $100 billion with Blackstone and Apollo among the participants. [1]

None of this is unprecedented, which is the point. In June the same partners led an initial $35 billion financing for a Broadcom platform serving 20 gigawatts of Anthropic and OpenAI compute. [1] This week Nvidia disclosed up to $105 billion to finance an OpenAI data center in Ohio, alongside a $500 billion program with six asset managers that would treat compute infrastructure as an asset class. [1]

The design concentrates a familiar question. When the seller arranges the buyer's loan, revenue stops being evidence of demand and becomes evidence of credit availability — and the buildout has grown too large, financially and politically, to unwind quietly. [2] Broadcom shares rose one percent Friday; nobody pricing that move was asking who holds the risk when the loop closes. [1] Special-purpose vehicles exist precisely so that question has somewhere else to live.

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin