Apollo sharpens focus on AI chip-backed loans for tech projects

Apollo Global Management is making a very large, very calculated bet that AI chips are the new real estate. The firm is structuring loans backed not by office buildings or toll roads, but by the physical processors that power artificial intelligence, and the lease payments those chips generate from tech companies desperate for compute. The flagship move: Apollo is leading a $35 billion capital solution for Broadcom’s AI XPV Platform, announced on June 9 in collaboration with Blackstone. That’s not a typo. Thirty-five billion dollars funneled into acquiring cutting-edge chips and leasing them to companies like Anthropic. How the plumbing works Apollo uses special-purpose vehicles, essentially shell companies created for a single transaction, to purchase AI chips outright. Those SPVs then lease the chips to tech companies that need compute capacity but don’t want to buy hardware themselves. The debt stays off corporate balance sheets, and the cash flows from leases serve as collateral. The chips in question include Google’s custom TPUs, which are being leased to Anthropic as part of a plan to expand compute capacity by over 1GW starting in mid-2026. The broader deal targets over 20GW...