The Anthropic credit rating is likely to come in lower after the IPO than big investors had long assumed. According to a Financial Times report published on October 30, 2026, Blackstone has told investors in Anthropic’s latest chip financing that the Claude maker should not expect an investment-grade rating after going public, but a rating in the “BB” range instead. That is the top tier of speculative grade, commonly called “junk”. Only a few months ago, Blackstone itself had pointed to investment grade. Here is what is confirmed, what rests on anonymous sources, and why a single letter grade can cost Anthropic billions.
Key Takeaways
- According to the FT, Blackstone now expects Anthropic to receive a rating in the “BB” range (or slightly higher) after its IPO, just below investment grade. Earlier, the investment firm had signaled investment grade before year-end.
- The three major agencies, Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, have not officially rated Anthropic yet. This is an expectation, not an assigned rating.
- The junior tranche of the roughly $63 billion chip financing “Project North Star” has already been rated “BB+” with a positive outlook by KBRA and “BB” by Morningstar DBRS.
- Anthropic’s IPO prospectus ties concrete credit terms to its rating: guarantees and collateral on a credit facility are only released once two of the three major agencies grant investment grade.
- The report landed on the same day the FT said OpenAI had cut its fundraising target from $30 billion to about $20 billion.
What the Financial Times reported
The story comes from FT US credit correspondent Michelle Chan and cites people familiar with the matter. Blackstone is the anchor investor in “Project North Star”, a financing of roughly $63 billion that lets Anthropic lease 1.5 gigawatts of Google chips. According to the report, Blackstone has now signaled to investors in that deal that a rating in the “BB” range is more likely after the IPO, based on guidance from the major rating agencies.
Anthropic, Blackstone, KBRA, Morningstar DBRS and S&P declined to comment to the FT, while Fitch and Moody’s did not respond. Anthropic and Blackstone also declined to comment to TechCrunch. So far, no party has officially confirmed the report. A full translation of the FT article was published by the Brazilian business daily Valor Econômico.
Anthropic credit rating: what “BB” actually means
Rating agencies split borrowers into two worlds. At S&P and Fitch, investment grade runs from “AAA” down to “BBB-”, at Moody’s down to “Baa3”. Anything below counts as speculative grade, also known as high yield or junk. “BB+” is the best grade below that line, and “BB” sits one notch lower. A “high junk” rating therefore means no default in sight, but a level of risk that many large lenders are not allowed to hold, or only in limited amounts.
That is the crux for Anthropic. According to the FT, many pension funds and insurers are barred from taking large positions in speculative-grade borrowers. Without investment grade, a big part of the debt market stays out of reach and borrowing gets more expensive. The FT writes that the company may then need to keep relying on suppliers with stronger credit to raise debt.
How the “North Star” chip financing is structured
The structure of “Project North Star”, which Wall Street banks closed earlier this week according to the FT, shows how much Anthropic already depends on other companies’ credit:
- Senior tranche: more than $42 billion, backed by a guarantee from Broadcom. The chipmaker co-develops the accelerators and holds an “A” range rating itself. The FT says that guarantee was key to getting the financing done at all.
- Junior tranche: $18 billion, backed by Anthropic’s lease payments and therefore directly exposed to the AI lab’s creditworthiness. KBRA rates it “BB+” with a positive outlook, Morningstar DBRS rates it “BB”.
- Blackstone: funds managed by the firm put $9 billion into the junior tranche at a yield of more than 10 percent, according to the FT.
A double-digit yield shows what price Anthropic is willing to pay for capital. Similar structures, where chips and data centers are financed through special-purpose vehicles and leases, are becoming more common across the industry, for example in SpaceX’s $40 billion debt deal for Nvidia GPUs.
What the IPO prospectus says about ratings
Anthropic filed its registration statement (Form S-1) with the SEC on October 26, 2026. The shares are set to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT”. The document contains no rating forecast of its own, but it shows where a rating has real-world consequences.
Anthropic’s credit facility is currently guaranteed by subsidiaries and secured by substantially all of the company’s assets. According to the prospectus, those guarantees and liens are only released once Anthropic obtains an investment-grade rating from at least two of Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. From then on, interest margins and commitment fees are also set to depend on the rating. A “BB” would push that step further out.
At the same time, the starting position is not weak. As of June 30, 2026, Anthropic reports $112.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents plus $19.3 billion in short-term investments in its prospectus. According to the FT, investors expect the IPO to raise around $100 billion more. On the other side are long-term commitments for compute and infrastructure, some of which run until 2045 according to the filing, plus heavy losses that we covered in our analysis of Anthropic’s S-1 filing.
Meanwhile, OpenAI lowers its funding target
On X, the rating news is being linked to a second FT report from the same day. According to that report, OpenAI cut the target of its current funding round by $10 billion to about $20 billion. Reuters, citing the FT, says the targeted valuation fell from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion and that some investors reduced their allocations. OpenAI had originally aimed to close the round ahead of Anthropic’s IPO, as we reported when the original $30 billion round was announced.
Both companies are courting the same pool of institutional investors. According to the FT, bankers for both labs have also lobbied the major rating agencies to give AI companies investment grade after their IPOs. Markets were jittery: the FT says the Nasdaq 100 was down as much as 3.6 percent on Friday afternoon after the report. How much of that was driven by the rating news rather than broader worries about AI spending is impossible to separate cleanly.
Analysis: a setback, not a collapse
On X, the news is framed as a “junk rating” and the next blow to the AI hype. That captures the core, but goes too far. First, there is no rating from the big three agencies yet, only an expectation from Blackstone that surfaced through anonymous sources. Second, “BB” is the best class within speculative grade and not unusual for a company without a track record of profits. Third, KBRA has already put a positive outlook on the particularly risky junior tranche.
The report still matters. It shows that credit markets judge the business model of the large AI labs more soberly than equity valuations suggest: huge revenue, but even larger multi-year commitments for compute. For Claude users, nothing changes in the short term. For the question of how cheaply Anthropic can fund its expansion, however, the rating is central. The next signals will come with the final prospectus, the share price range and the first official ratings from Moody’s, S&P and Fitch.
