Anthropic Expected to Receive High Junk Credit Rating After IPO, Complicating $800B AI Spending Plans

Blackstone Revises Anthropic Credit Rating Forecast

Blackstone told investors that Anthropic is now expected to receive a high junk credit rating from major credit rating agencies following its initial public offering, marking a significant reversal from previous guidance. The private capital giant, serving as anchor investor in Anthropic's recent $63 billion chip financing deal known as Project North Star, indicated the AI lab will likely receive a double B range rating—the top tier of speculative junk grade—rather than the investment-grade rating it had predicted before year-end1

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. This adjustment came after Blackstone received updated guidance from major credit agencies, fundamentally altering expectations for the Claude model maker's financial flexibility.

Impact on AI Infrastructure Spending Ambitions

The junk credit rating designation carries substantial implications for Anthropic's aggressive expansion plans. The AI lab filed to go public earlier this week, outlining what could become the largest listing of all time next month, with "bold but sane" plans to spend more than $800 billion on computing infrastructure between now and 20452

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. An investment-grade rating would have enabled Anthropic to borrow at significantly lower rates to finance these AI infrastructure spending initiatives. The company currently holds cash and equivalents exceeding $112 billion and anticipates raising approximately $100 billion more through the Anthropic IPO2

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. A high junk rating will make it considerably more difficult and costlier for the lab to raise capital needed to sustain its massive compute power requirements.

Restricted Access to Institutional Capital

A speculative junk grade rating will limit the pool of available capital because many insurance and pension funds face restrictions on taking large positions in junk-rated borrowers2

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. This constraint means Anthropic may need to continue relying on its suppliers with high credit ratings to support debt-raising efforts, rather than accessing broader institutional markets independently. The lab has been on a spending spree throughout the past 12 months, accumulating large compute power deals that have already raised concerns among investors about sustainability1

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Project North Star Financing Structure

Wall Street banks recently closed the Project North Star chip financing deal, which provides funding for Anthropic to lease 1.5 gigawatts of Google's semiconductors2

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. The structure reveals how Anthropic has navigated credit challenges: more than $42 billion of senior loans is guaranteed by Broadcom, which co-develops the chips and maintains an investment-grade A-tier credit rating, while $18 billion of junior debt is backed by the AI lab's lease payments2

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. Institutional investors favor senior debt because it takes priority over junior loans in default scenarios, making Broadcom's high credit rating crucial for securing this financing.

Current Rating Agency Assessments

Blackstone's funds invested $9 billion in the junior debt at a lucrative yield exceeding 10 percent2

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. Kroll Bond Rating Agency assigned Project North Star's $18 billion junior debt a double B plus rating with positive outlook, representing a slight improvement from the stable outlook in a similar deal called Project Big Sky four months earlier2

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. Morningstar DBRS provided a double B rating for the same debt2

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. However, the big three credit agencies—Fitch, Moody's, and S&P—which wield greater influence over companies' borrowing costs, have not officially issued credit ratings for Anthropic yet.

Industry-Wide Implications

Bankers representing both Anthropic and rival OpenAI have actively lobbied the largest rating agencies to grant investment-grade ratings after their IPOs2

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. The outcome of Anthropic's rating could set precedent for how credit markets assess AI labs with massive capital requirements but uncertain revenue trajectories. Watch how the major credit agencies ultimately rate Anthropic when it completes its public offering, as this will signal whether AI companies can access traditional debt markets on favorable terms or must continue structuring complex supplier-backed financing arrangements to fund their infrastructure buildouts.