This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is moving deeper into the AI infrastructure race, with Google helping backstop lease payments connected to five US data centers that Anthropic plans to use for high-powered computing capacity. The deal could help Anthropic secure what amounts to a $35 billion loan, while tightening Google’s role as more than just an early investor in the Claude developer. It is also a chip supplier through its tensor processing units, giving Google another way to support demand for its own AI hardware.
The structure shows how closely tied the AI buildout is becoming. Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) helped support the financing with its chip-design role and strong credit profile, while Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO) and Blackstone (NYSE:BX) are financing the deal. The data center network includes TeraWulf (NASDAQ:WULF), Cipher Digital (NASDAQ:CIFR), Hut 8 (NASDAQ:HUT), and a joint venture between Next Frontier and Fluidstack, with Fluidstack leases sitting inside bond deals that raised more than $15 billion over the last nine months.
For investors, the bigger signal could be the rise of AI infrastructure deals backed by the balance sheets of the largest technology companies. Google’s backstop would only begin once the data centers are operational and Fluidstack starts its lease, but the structure still points to how Mag Seven credit support may be helping finance parts of the AI data center boom. That could unlock more construction, but it may also bring more scrutiny as regulators and credit investors watch whether a small group of technology giants is becoming too important to AI financing, hardware demand, and infrastructure risk.
