Hyperscaler Capex Surge Reaches $725B as Broadcom, Apollo, and Blackstone Launch $35B AI XPV Compute Financing Platform
The capital expenditure cycle behind artificial intelligence infrastructure has reached unprecedented heights, with the top U.S. hyperscalers—Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle—collectively driving annualized capex toward $725 billion as of the second half of 2026. To bridge the massive gap between frontier AI labs' venture-backed cash flows and the upfront capital required to deploy gigawatt-scale infrastructure, a new model of capital mobilization has emerged. On June 9, 2026, Broadcom, Apollo Global Management, and Blackstone's Credit & Insurance Business announced the establishment of the AI XPV Platform, a landmark credit-based compute financing vehicle designed to enable more than 20 gigawatts (GW) of compute capacity through 2028.
The AI XPV Platform: Shifting AI Financing to Credit Risk
The AI XPV Platform represents a structural shift in AI infrastructure financing from equity beta to credit risk. pairing advanced silicon and networking solutions with long-term, flexible private credit.1 Rather than providing direct financing themselves, technology suppliers like Broadcom partner with sophisticated institutional asset managers to independently underwrite and capitalize the assets.
The platform launched with an initial $35 billion tranche led by Apollo, in partnership with Blackstone and leading global banks (including Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Citi, and UBS), to facilitate Anthropic's capacity expansion of more than 1 GW of compute infrastructure in Fluidstack-based sites starting in mid-2026.
Apollo Partner Jamshid Ehsani summarized the significance of the vehicle:
"Broadcom and Anthropic are world-class companies operating at the frontier of technological innovation, and we are proud to have led the largest private financing ever executed. AI compute is rapidly emerging as one of the most compelling new asset classes in finance, characterized by contracted cash flows, mission-critical utility and a supply-demand dynamic that continues to intensify. As hyperscalers and frontier AI labs work to secure the computing power necessary to train and deploy next-generation models, the demand for flexible, large-scale financing requires new capital solutions."
Underwriting the Economics of Frontier Labs
During Broadcom's Q3 FY2026 earnings call on September 2, 2026, CFO Amie Thuener confirmed that the first $35 billion tranche is already underway and actively deploying. CEO Hock Tan highlighted the compelling economics that justify these massive credit facilities, noting that every gigawatt of compute deployed by frontier labs can yield astronomical annual recurring revenue:
"We do what we can to help them, and part of it is creating sources of financing to help these companies with the leading-edge frontier models in the world be able to play in the same playing field... It is a great investment for us when you think about it, that every gigawatt of compute they deploy, they could achieve $30 billion of ARR, annual revenue per gigawatt. That is a hell of a business model."
Tan also noted that Anthropic is well on its way to an initial public offering (IPO), which will eventually improve its corporate investment credit and open up broader, more traditional sources of capital. In the interim, the XPV Platform provides the necessary bridge to scale.
Expanding the Gigawatt-Scale Pipeline
The AI XPV Platform is designed to scale up to support multiple frontier labs, including OpenAI, which is deep in development with Broadcom on custom XPUs and is expected to require substantial credit backing for its upcoming multi-gigawatt deployments.
This private credit boom mirrors similar moves across Wall Street, where consortia of alternative asset managers are establishing multi-hundred-billion-dollar compute financing platforms to bypass traditional banking constraints and fund the physical bottlenecks of the AI buildout—specifically land, power, and data center shells.
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An instance of Private credit must now pivot from funding leveraged buyouts to financing physical AI infrastructure. — Institutional private credit giants are partnering with hardware suppliers to finance and underwrite massive physical computing infrastructures. ↩︎