OpenAI-Broadcom Chip Deal Hits $18B Financing Snag

The OpenAI-Broadcom custom AI chip deal has encountered an $18 billion financing hurdle, according to The Information. Broadcom is arranging more than $50 billion in financing for the partnership, with Apollo Global Management and Blackstone in early discussions as lenders; the transaction is targeted to close before the end of 2026. The financing supports OpenAI's internal chip project called Nexus, a custom-chip program agreed to in October 2025 targeting 10 gigawatts of AI accelerators deployed by late 2029. Broadcom previously arranged a financing facility for Anthropic; sources differ on its size, with one reporting $42 billion and another $60 billion.

SpaceX is seeking approximately $40 billion in debt financing to purchase Nvidia chips, structured as $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt, with Apollo expected to lead and the deal targeted to close in 2027. Apollo separately has a $500 billion compute-financing initiative with Nvidia and five other financial institutions. Oracle is in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs to finance chip purchases for a 1-gigawatt data center, targeting year-end finalization, through a structure that may involve a separate company to minimize borrowing costs and could be arranged as an off-balance-sheet lease.

Morgan Stanley estimates AI infrastructure will require $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028. Eric Schmidt said the real limit to AI scaling is cash, not energy, estimating data center buildout at roughly $50 billion per gigawatt, making 10 gigawatts a half-trillion-dollar commitment, and said U.S. capital markets' ability to borrow at that scale gives America an advantage that Europe lacks. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said capital, not chips, memory, or power, may become AI's biggest constraint, partly because infrastructure is paid for years before it generates revenue, and he expects compute demand to outstrip supply potentially through 2029-2030. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan identified capital and the cost of capital as the front-line challenge and said investors will eventually demand returns on investment.