Anthropic’s Junk Credit Rating Went Unreported During $35 Billion AI Financing
The $35 billion chip-financing deal announced for Anthropic in June split lenders into two camps. Most of the money benefited from a guarantee from Broadcom, while $4.4 billion of junior debt depended more directly on the AI developer’s credit.
Yet a rating assessment of the company behind that risk, issued that month, remained unreported until October.
Kroll Bond Rating Agency assigned Anthropic a BB+ issuer rating in June, according to documents reviewed by the Financial Times and disclosed on Friday, a rating that sits one notch below investment grade. KBRA also rated the junior tranche BB+ with a stable outlook, the newspaper reported.
The disclosure gives new context to questions raised before the financing was announced. On June 2, Semafor reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that some prospective buyers of the unguaranteed debt had declined to participate because they had not received detailed financial information.
According to the FT, Anthropic supplied KBRA with revenue, adjusted operating income, first-quarter annualized revenue, and internal second-quarter projections. The materials did not include free cash flow or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
KBRA analysts instead estimated missing measures and used a risk-scoring approach rather than a full financial model, the FT reported.
Apollo Global Management announced the $35 billion commitment on June 9, alongside Blackstone and banking partners, to finance Broadcom’s AI computing platform. The arrangement supports more than one gigawatt of computing capacity intended for Anthropic.
The junior debt carried a yield of approximately 8.5%, versus a 5.75% rate on senior debt, according to the FT. The 2.75-percentage-point difference reflects the financing’s distinct terms and credit protections.
The structure also separated Anthropic’s direct borrowing from its infrastructure obligations. The FT reported that Anthropic had no debt on its own balance sheet in late June, relying instead on counterparties and special-purpose financing vehicles.
READ: A Leaked Anthropic Prospectus Shows Explosive Growth, A Widening Loss, and Its Own AI Risk Warnings
On October 2, Bloomberg reported that banks were assembling another $60 billion in chip financing, including a proposed $18 billion junior tranche.
The newly disclosed assessment is not a downgrade or evidence of financial distress, but it establishes a previously unreported credit benchmark for a company whose infrastructure financing increasingly depends on lenders evaluating its commercial performance.
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