The Nasdaq 100 closed down 3.5%. The trigger: a Financial Times report that Blackstone told investors Anthropic may land a speculative-grade credit rating once it goes public.
The bottom line is that nobody has rated anything yet. Neither S&P, Moody’s nor Fitch has issued a rating, and Blackstone’s view is an assessment, not an agency decision. But markets sold first.
What Blackstone said
The warning came during a briefing on Project North Star, a $63 billion chip financing deal. Blackstone told investors that the agencies are more likely to assign a BB-range rating, which is speculative grade, known as junk. Under the S&P and Fitch scales, BBB- and above counts as investment grade, and BB+ and below does not. That line matters because many pension funds and insurers are barred by their own rules from buying non-investment-grade bonds. Fewer eligible buyers means higher borrowing costs.
By the numbers
The figure that matters is $800 billion. That is roughly what Anthropic has committed to spend on future computing resources, GPU infrastructure and data center capacity included. Against it, annual recurring revenue is expected to reach about $80 billion within the year. One calculation making the rounds: even at a 40% operating margin, on a par with high-profit software firms, it would take about 17 years of operating profit to cover the commitment. The company has said it intends to put over $800 billion into compute by 2045.
Investors will note the squeeze this puts on the deal itself. North Star splits into two pieces. Broadcom stands behind $42 billion of senior notes, using its own investment-grade rating. Anthropic underwrites the other $18 billion as junior, subordinated debt. Junior debt gets repaid last if things go wrong, so it carries the junk expectation and demands higher yields. SpaceX, by contrast, has investment-grade ratings from the major agencies, backed by hardware and defense contracts.
Panic, then the balance sheet
The selling spread beyond chip names to software companies priced on AI hopes. A fear gauge calculated by Goldman Sachs jumped from its normal 4.63 to 7.94. Short selling ran at five times the volume of buying, and leveraged hedge funds were forced to unwind positions.
Anthropic is not short of cash. It holds more than $112 billion in cash and equivalents plus about $19 billion in short-term investments, around $131 billion in all. It is aiming to raise $100 billion in its IPO, which would lift reserves toward $231 billion. Operating cash flow has already turned positive.
So the sell-off is a bet on debt capacity years out, not a liquidity scare today. The next hard fact arrives with the IPO, when the agencies finally have to put a letter on it.
Sources
- [Why the Sudden Drop?] The Truth Behind the Tech Stock Collapse Following Reports of Anthropic's 'Junk Rating' and the Reality of Its Finances_919｜whereverjp
- Blackstone Predicts Anthropic May Receive a Speculative-Grade Rating Upon IPO, Amid Funding Pressure from an $800 Billion AI Compute Plan | KuCoin
Photo: Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (CC BY 2.0)
