Broadcom Enters Circular AI Financing Game as Anthropic Commits $125B to TPU Leases

Broadcom is stepping up to finance its customers' compute purchases, mirroring a circular financing model aggressively pushed by hyperscalers and chipmakers like Nvidia. Anthropic committed an eye-watering $125.2B to a five-year lease of TPU capacity, sitting alongside OpenAI’s $300B deal with Oracle and $250B agreement with Microsoft. The corporate filings reveal a direct conflict of interest, as Broadcom acts as both Anthropic’s primary hardware supplier and its financing partner for the capacity expansion. In a structurally different arrangement, SoftBank completed a $10B equity tranche into OpenAI on October 1, bringing its total investment to $64.6B for roughly 13% of the AI lab. Critics are pointing to the late-1990s telecom boom, warning that vendor-backed financing leaves suppliers dangerously exposed if AI developers fail to generate enough revenue to repay them. "Nvidia is putting in place a massive amount of its balance sheet, and Broadcom is having to follow suit." — Jay Goldberg