Apollo sharpens focus on AI chip-backed loans for tech projects

Apollo Global Management is making a very large, very calculated bet that AI chips are the new real estate. The firm is structuring loans backed not by office buildings or toll roads, but by the physical processors that power artificial intelligence, and the lease payments those chips generate from tech companies desperate for compute.

The flagship move: Apollo is leading a $35 billion capital solution for Broadcom’s AI XPV Platform, announced on June 9 in collaboration with Blackstone. That’s not a typo. Thirty-five billion dollars funneled into acquiring cutting-edge chips and leasing them to companies like Anthropic.

How the plumbing works

Apollo uses special-purpose vehicles, essentially shell companies created for a single transaction, to purchase AI chips outright. Those SPVs then lease the chips to tech companies that need compute capacity but don’t want to buy hardware themselves. The debt stays off corporate balance sheets, and the cash flows from leases serve as collateral.

The chips in question include Google’s custom TPUs, which are being leased to Anthropic as part of a plan to expand compute capacity by over 1GW starting in mid-2026. The broader deal targets over 20GW of compute capacity by 2028.

This isn’t Apollo’s first chip deal

The Broadcom transaction builds on earlier moves. Back in February 2026, Apollo was reportedly nearing a $3.4 billion loan structured around Nvidia chips leased to Elon Musk’s xAI. Same playbook: buy the hardware, lease it out, securitize the cash flows.

Apollo is staffing up accordingly, actively hiring a dedicated AI sector head to lead what the firm clearly expects to be a growing pipeline of chip-backed financings.

A portion of the $35 billion package is expected to hit the secondary market after July 2026, which means other institutional investors will soon be able to buy slices of AI chip lease debt.

What this means for investors

The risk side deserves attention. Chip depreciation is real. Nvidia and Google release new architectures regularly, and today’s cutting-edge TPU is tomorrow’s legacy hardware. If a lessee defaults or decides not to renew, the residual value of the collateral could be significantly lower than the outstanding loan balance. Apollo is mitigating this through guaranteed lease structures and creditworthy counterparties, but the risk doesn’t disappear.

There’s also concentration risk. The AI compute market is dominated by a handful of chip designers and a handful of hyperscale consumers. If one major lessee runs into financial trouble, or if the AI spending cycle slows, the entire asset class could face repricing pressure simultaneously.

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