WSJ: Broadcom arranging $50B+ financing for OpenAI custom chips; Oracle in talks with Apollo/Goldman for chip purchase financing
What happened
The Wall Street Journal reported that Broadcom has spent recent weeks working to arrange more than $50 billion in financing for the custom AI chip it is developing with OpenAI, with Apollo and Blackstone among the lenders approached. Separately, Oracle is in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs to fund a large chip purchase, likely through a separate entity that would buy the chips and lease them to Oracle. SpaceX has also spoken with lenders in recent days about a roughly $40 billion financing tied to Nvidia chips, first reported by the FT. Talks are at an early stage and deal sizes could change, but Broadcom and Oracle aim to close before year-end. Reuters' Thursday 'Open Interest' market piece highlighted these reports as the latest turn in the 'circular financing' wave in AI.
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Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- Broadcom (AVGO) — arranger and beneficiary of OpenAI chip demand
- Oracle (ORCL) — seeking off-balance-sheet chip financing
- Nvidia (NVDA) — the ultimate chip supplier in the SpaceX leg
- Apollo and Blackstone as lenders benefit from fee income and yields but take on concentration risk; the broader AI-semiconductor complex (AMD, Marvell, Micron) trades on the durability-of-demand question this financing wave raises.