Apollo closes $35B Anthropic debt deal, signaling AI's early turn to debt markets
In brief
- Apollo and Blackstone closed $35 billion debt package for Anthropic on June 5, 2026, structured to fund GPU leasing.
- AI infrastructure financing offers private credit investors yields between 5.75% and 10%, backed by hardware collateral.
- Apollo predicts AI companies will access debt markets much earlier than software predecessors, reflecting trillion-dollar capex needs by 2030.
The economics of AI infrastructure
Building AI requires physical infrastructure on a scale that equity financing alone cannot comfortably absorb. Training large models and running inference at scale requires enormous quantities of specialized chips that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. A startup in the large language model space can credibly need billions in hardware before it has generated meaningful revenue.
This capital requirement is reshaping how the industry finances itself. Apollo executives are now openly predicting that AI companies will turn to debt markets far sooner in their lifecycles than software predecessors ever did.
Apollo's expanding AI portfolio
The Anthropic deal isn't Apollo's first bet on AI infrastructure. Earlier in 2026, Apollo put roughly $7 billion to work in Elon Musk's xAI, specifically to fund access to Nvidia GPUs. That deal carried a 10% coupon, and Apollo has since reported approximately $250 million in paper gains on the position.
The firm is also exploring a potential increase to an OpenAI-linked loan tied to SoftBank, possibly lifting that facility to $9 billion. These moves reflect Apollo's conviction that AI infrastructure will dominate loan origination in the years ahead. The firm originated a record $309 billion in loans in 2025.
The yield opportunity
For private credit investors, the appeal is substantial. Yields between 5.75% and 10% are available on deals collateralized by hardware that major AI companies need to operate. The Anthropic facility's senior portions yield around 5.75%, backed by Broadcom's credit support, while junior tranches carry a higher yield of 8.5%.
Apollo projects that AI-driven capital expenditures could reach into the trillions by 2030. That scale explains why its executives have framed AI infrastructure as a central pillar of where loan volume is headed. Blackstone's involvement in the Anthropic deal suggests Apollo is not alone in recognizing the opportunity.
