Blackstone tells investors Anthropic may receive a higher-grade junk rating after IPO
According to a report by the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, Blackstone has told investors in Anthropic’s latest approximately $63 billion chip financing deal (Project North Star) that Anthropic may not be able to immediately obtain an investment-grade credit rating after its IPO, and is expected to receive a higher-grade non-investment-grade (junk) rating, more likely in the BB range or above. This differs from Blackstone’s guidance to investment partners over the past several months that it would receive an investment-grade rating before year-end; the adjustment is based on feedback from major rating agencies.
This change could limit Anthropic’s financing sources. Many insurance and pension funds have position limits on junk-rated borrowers and cannot allocate large amounts. Anthropic currently has more than $112 billion in cash and equivalents, and investors expect its IPO may raise about $100 billion more; its prospectus shows that the company plans to invest more than $800 billion in building compute infrastructure in 2045. Obtaining an investment-grade rating would allow it to borrow at lower interest rates to support related projects; otherwise, it may need to continue relying more heavily on support from highly rated suppliers.
In Project North Star, more than $42 billion in senior loans are guaranteed by Broadcom; $18 billion in subordinated debt has been rated BB+ by KBRA, with a positive outlook, and BB by Morningstar DBRS. A Blackstone-managed fund invested $9 billion in it, with a yield of more than 10%. Fitch, Moody’s and S&P, the three major rating agencies, have not yet formally assigned Anthropic a credit rating. Earlier, in June 2026, KBRA gave Anthropic a BB+ issuer rating.
Original sources:
Title: Anthropic may not secure investment-grade rating after IPO, Blackstone tells investors
Publisher: Financial Times (reported by Michelle Chan and others)
Date of publication: 2026-10-30
URL: https://www.ft.com/content/59383c7f-8d82-493f-bf01-d2e862a1018f（及FT官方X帖确认）
Source type: media report
Verification: multiple English reprints and summaries were read for this release (Traders Union, BigGo, Valor, Expansion, etc.); the core facts are consistent; the original FT full text is behind a paywall and was not read directly in full. Verification date: 2026-10-30.
Supporting content: Blackstone’s communicated rating expectation adjustment to Project North Star investors, cash and spending plans, financing structure, and existing ratings.Title: Anthropic offers Blackstone double-digit yield in latest chip financing
Publisher: Financial Times
Date of publication: 2026-10-16
URL: https://www.ft.com/content/cb4034e1-475f-40b9-a5f9-256e91aacb89
Source type: media report
Verification: public summaries and key passages were read.
Supporting content: Project North Star structure (about $42 billion senior + $18 billion subordinated), Blackstone’s $9 billion participation and >10% yield, and the earlier investment-grade expectation.Title: Anthropic assigned highest junk credit rating in June
Publisher: Financial Times
Date of publication: 2026-10-16
URL: https://www.ft.com/content/5a310aee-f555-4266-874c-b1b4db20186d
Source type: media report
Verification: public summaries were read.
Supporting content: KBRA gave Anthropic a BB+ issuer rating in June 2026.Title: Anthropic faces higher borrowing risk after Blackstone flags junk rating post-IPO
Publisher: Traders Union
Date of publication: 2026-10-30
URL: https://tradersunion.com/news/institutions/show/4040186-anthropic-junk-rating-ipo-risk/
Source type: media report (paraphrasing FT)
Verification: full text read.
Supporting content: Detailed paraphrase of FT reporting on rating adjustments, cash, spending, North Star structure, and rating details.
ABAB AI Insight
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI researchers, including Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, and is positioned around AI safety research. Its early financing was mainly from individual investors and strategic partners; Amazon and Google later became important equity and compute partners. In May-June 2026, it completed a Series H financing of about $65 billion, valuing it at $965 billion. Blackstone had already participated in its chip financing and this was not its first involvement.
On the capital path, Anthropic leases chips through an SPV structure rather than holding them directly: senior debt is guaranteed by suppliers such as Broadcom, reducing reliance on Anthropic’s own credit; subordinated debt is more exposed to its ability to pay. In June, Apollo- and Blackstone-led Project Big Sky subordinated debt of about $35 billion carried a yield of about 8.5%; Blackstone’s portion of the North Star subordinated debt had a yield above 10%, showing rising costs. The funds are used to purchase computing power such as Google TPU, supporting training and inference for the Claude models rather than general operations.
A comparable case is CoreWeave. The AI cloud service provider relies heavily on private credit backed by GPU collateral and customer contracts, with total debt of about $50 billion, and major rating agencies placing it in the single-B to low double-B range. Its unsecured debt recently yielded about 15%, and CDS reflected relatively high-risk pricing, despite backing from Nvidia and others. Like Anthropic, it uses supplier guarantees and SPVs to isolate part of the risk; the difference is that CoreWeave is already listed and its debt sits more directly on its own balance sheet, and the market’s repricing of AI infrastructure debt has already appeared in its case.
If, after the IPO, the formal rating remains in the BB range, Anthropic’s path to issuing debt at lower cost in large scale will be constrained, and it will rely more on guarantees or priority procurement arrangements from highly rated parties such as Amazon, Google and Broadcom to unlock financing. This strengthens the bargaining and risk-sharing position of compute suppliers in the industry chain, while also making Anthropic’s long-term $800 billion spending plan more sensitive to cash burn and lease performance. The indicators to watch are the three major rating agencies’ formal rating actions after the IPO and the subsequent issuance yields on unsecured debt.
ABAB News · Cognitive Rules
Supplier guarantees can reduce senior debt costs, but they cannot completely detach subordinated debt from the borrower’s own credit.
A downgrade in rating expectations from investment grade to higher-grade junk directly narrows the amount of capital that insurance and pension funds can allocate.
The more AI compute expansion relies on private-credit SPVs, the more suppliers’ residual value support becomes a financing condition.