Blackstone now expects Anthropic to get a 'high junk' credit rating after its IPO

What's the deal? Blackstone has told investors that Anthropic is expected to receive a "high" junk credit rating, in the double-B range, after its IPO, the Financial Times reported on 30 October. That reverses Blackstone's earlier guidance that the Claude maker would reach an investment-grade rating before 2027. Anthropic and Blackstone declined to comment, according to TechCrunch, and Moody's, S&P and Fitch have not yet formally rated the company.

Where it comes from: Blackstone is the anchor investor in "Project North Star", Anthropic's $63 billion financing to lease about 1.5GW of Google's AI chips. According to the FT's reporting, more than $42 billion of senior loans in the deal are guaranteed by Broadcom, another roughly $18 billion of junior debt is backed by Anthropic's lease payments, and Blackstone's funds put about $9 billion into the junior debt at yields above 10%.

Why it matters: A junk rating would make borrowing more expensive for Anthropic just as it takes on large long-term compute commitments, and it shrinks the pool of buyers for its debt, since many pension funds and insurers are limited in how much sub-investment-grade paper they can hold. The report landed days after Anthropic filed its S-1 for a Nasdaq listing expected in mid-November, and in the same week OpenAI cut the target for its own funding round.

The signal: Anthropic's last private round valued it at $965 billion, but credit markets judge the same company on its fixed commitments and cash flows rather than its growth story. How the debt is rated will shape how cheaply the AI labs can keep funding the build-out.

Sources: Financial Times, TechCrunch, Wall St Engine on X (deal summary)

Image credit: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images (via TechCrunch)