NEW YORK, June 10 -- The next generation of Claude will run on chips that Anthropic does not own, in data centers financed by debt the company could not have raised on its own name. That, more than the headline number, is what Wall Street's newest mega-deal says about how the AI boom is now being paid for.

Apollo Global Management Inc. and Blackstone Inc. have completed a $35 billion debt package that will buy custom Google chips for Anthropic PBC to lease, a transaction reported this week that ranks among the largest private credit deals ever assembled. Bloomberg reported that the financing priced across three tranches, with roughly half the debt syndicated on to other investors.

The structure is the story. A special purpose vehicle fo...