Blackstone (BX) Warns Anthropic Faces Junk Rating on $800 Billion Build-Out

Blackstone Walks Back Its Rating Call

Blackstone (BX) has told investors that Anthropic (ANTHROPIC) is likely to receive a below-investment-grade credit rating once its planned initial public offering completes, dropping earlier guidance that had pointed to an investment-grade outcome by the end of the year. The shift, flagged in a trading-desk post and detailed in a Financial Times report on Thursday, matters because the rating sets how cheaply the company behind the Claude AI models can borrow for a compute program valued at more than $800 billion. Below the BBB- threshold, debt is classed as speculative, or junk. Many pension funds and insurers operate under mandates that cap or exclude such holdings, steering that capital toward investment-grade credit and instruments such as bond ETFs, and several of those buyers are barred outright from names rated below BBB-, so depth for future Anthropic bonds would shrink at exactly the moment the spending plan needs it. The $800 billion program spans chips, data centers and supporting infrastructure, and it is built to be financed in stages, which is why the grade attached to each issuance matters. Junk status would not block the listing itself, but it would raise the cost of every bond sale the plan requires afterward. Kroll Bond Rating Agency has already placed Anthropic one notch below that mark, assigning a BB+ grade in June. Blackstone's updated expectation, formed from feedback shared by the major agencies, is for a BB-range grade from the three big raters. The stance marks a sharp walk-back from the firm's own earlier message, which assumed the BBB- pass mark would be reached within this year, and its funds are among the largest lenders into that program, which is why the guidance carries extra weight. COINOTAG data shows the pre-IPO Anthropic instrument last changing hands at $1,703.49, down 5.34% over 24 hours, as the guidance change filtered through pre-IPO trading.

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Flagged in a trading-desk post.

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Project North Star's Unguaranteed $18 Billion

The exposure behind the warning sits inside Project North Star, Anthropic's $63 billion chip financing program. More than $42 billion of its loans carry a guarantee from Broadcom, an investment-grade chipmaker, so those lenders are insulated from Anthropic's own credit standing. The remaining $18 billion rests on the company alone, and Blackstone funds hold roughly $9 billion of that uncovered slice at yields above 10%, which puts the firm's book directly in the path of any downgrade. The guarantee structure is why the two tranches price so differently: the larger one trades off Broadcom's balance sheet, while the smaller one sells on Anthropic's name alone, which is where the double-digit yields come from. Anthropic's own resources give it room to argue otherwise: the company holds more than $112 billion in cash, and investors expect the IPO, slated for a Nasdaq debut by late November, to raise roughly $100 billion more. A debut of that size would rank among the largest offerings on record. The prospectus itself describes the compute plan as “bold but sane.” There is recent precedent for a fast upgrade: SpaceX collected investment-grade ratings from all three major agencies within days of its June IPO. As of September, though, the raters still classed Anthropic as speculative even as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley pressed its case. Fitch, Moody's and S&P have yet to rule, and their verdicts after the listing will set what the company pays to fund the build-out. Timing matters as well: a grade issued before the debut would shape the order book, while a post-listing verdict would reprice the existing loans.

Where the Pre-IPO Instrument Stands

The pre-IPO Anthropic instrument carries its strongest resistance at $1,924.39, scored 91 out of 100 on COINOTAG's composite, with the strongest support at $1,587.93 at 63/100. A daily RSI of 25.8 and a bearish MACD reading leave the chart in a downtrend, and the gap between those two scores describes the near-term picture: sellers still control the tape until the level above $1,900 is reclaimed. Perpetual funding sits at 0.0025% per interval with open interest near $65.5 million. Blackstone's own shares held firmer, last at $118.48, down 1.55%, with resistance at $122.35 (97/100) and support at $113.54 (87/100).