Crux AI is tapping a $22 billion financing from a group of 10 banks to buy tensor processing units, or TPUs, made by Google. People familiar with the arrangement say the loan is secured by the chips' value and by Crux AI's customer agreements. The debt could be swapped later for investment grade bond financing placed with institutional investors.
Named lenders include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA and Bank of Nova Scotia, according to people who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The banks are currently expanding the syndicate to distribute risk, and a subset are arranging a $1 billion revolving credit line.
Debt issuance totals in the hundreds of billions of dollars as firms build out AI infrastructure. While much of it funds new data centers, financing aimed at the chips and servers inside them is gaining traction. A lender consortium that included Apollo Global Management Inc. and Blackstone arranged a $35 billion financing for Anthropic, enabling it to lease TPUs in a deal supported by Broadcom Inc., which assists Google in manufacturing the chips.
A second transaction built on the same template is under active discussion, with more than $60 billion on the table. And last month, Nvidia Corp. announced a $500 billion collaboration that features six powerhouse financial institutions, Blackstone among them, designed to help customers finance purchases of its processors.
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Internally dubbed Project Braid, Crux AI formally launched last week to provide compute for AI labs, with a focus on firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic. It plans to go up against neocloud rivals like CoreWeave Inc. and Nebius Group NV by relying on TPUs built by Google, which is vying to capture market share from Nvidia's ubiquitous GPUs. The venture begins with $5 billion in equity support from Blackstone and aims to have 500 megawatts of capacity operational in 2027. Bloomberg reported last week that the project has already faced delays at major data center locations slated to run Google's chips.
Crux AI declined to comment on the financing, and representatives for Blackstone and Goldman Sachs also would not comment. Alphabet, SMBC, Barclays, BNP and Scotiabank did not respond to requests for comment. Some specifics were reported earlier by 9fin. For everyday investors, the takeaway is that AI demand is pulling in ever larger and more creative funding, with chips now squarely in the financing spotlight.
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