Blackstone has changed its own forecast for Anthropic’s credit. The Financial Times reported that Blackstone, the anchor investor in a recent 63 billion dollar deal to finance Anthropic’s chips, told investors in that deal it now expects the Claude maker to receive a high junk rating, in the double B range, after its initial public offering. TechCrunch reported the FT account on October 30, and Invezz reported the same expectation independently the same day.
The reversal matters because of what Blackstone said before. The FT notes Blackstone had previously told investors the opposite: that Anthropic would receive an investment grade rating, indicating low risk for lenders, before 2027. A double B rating is the top tier of speculative grade, one step below the BBB minus investment grade threshold, and it carries higher borrowing costs and a smaller pool of permitted institutional buyers.
Neither company would confirm the account. TechCrunch said it reached out to Anthropic and Blackstone and both declined to comment, and no rating agency has ruled: the expectation is a lender’s forecast based on agency feedback, not an assigned rating. Invezz reported that the junior debt in the Project North Star financing, about 18 billion dollars resting on Anthropic alone rather than on Broadcom’s guarantee, has drawn double B range assessments from KBRA and Morningstar DBRS, while the three major agencies have not officially rated Anthropic.
The timing sharpens the point. Anthropic filed to go public earlier this week, and its financing structure already separates the risk: more than 42 billion dollars of the chip deal’s loans carry support from Broadcom, an investment grade chipmaker, while the junior slice prices off Anthropic’s own credit. If the agencies land where Blackstone now expects, the equity story of very fast revenue growth and the debt story of speculative grade borrowing will have to coexist, and the cost of the company’s compute plan will be set by the second one.