Broadcom and Amazon test investor demand for AI capital expansion

Building the infrastructure for artificial intelligence has become so expensive that the companies doing it are now essentially running their own shadow banking operations. Broadcom agreed on Oct. 1 to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to support a $125.2 billion TPU lease arrangement, a deal that could eventually let Broadcom convert that debt into an equity stake in one of the world’s most valuable AI startups. Meanwhile, Amazon has issued over $62 billion in bonds this year alone to fund its own AI buildout. The Broadcom financing machine Broadcom’s lending agreement with Anthropic is structured to span five years, and it’s designed to position Anthropic as Broadcom’s largest custom-chip client by 2027. The debt-to-equity conversion option makes this more than a standard financing arrangement. In June 2026, Broadcom formed strategic partnerships with Apollo Global Management and Blackstone to finance over 20 gigawatts of compute capacity for AI labs. The first tranche of that effort closed at $35 billion, projected to support nearly 1 gigawatt of compute for Anthropic alone. By August 2026, Broadcom was reportedly in negotiations for upwards of $60 billion in debt financing, pote...