Blackstone Expects Anthropic to Get Junk Credit Rating After IPO

Blackstone has told its investors that it expects Anthropic to receive a credit rating in the upper tier of speculative grade, most likely BB, after the company goes public. The investment group had earlier signaled a more favorable outlook: investment grade following the stock market debut.

The change is not a downgrade by a rating agency. It is a shift in the forecast of one of the players involved in financing Anthropic's infrastructure.

What investment grade means

Credit rating agencies do not judge what a company is worth on the stock market. They assess the risk that it will fail to repay its debts. On the S&P scale, BBB− is the lowest investment-grade rating, and BB+ sits just below it in speculative territory. KBRA assigned Anthropic a BB+ issuer rating in June, though that assessment is not equivalent to ratings from Moody's, S&P or Fitch.

Missing the threshold does not cut off funding, but it can make it more expensive. The US Securities and Exchange Commission notes that bond buyers typically demand higher interest when default risk is greater, and some institutional investors are restricted from buying low-rated debt.

There is also a contractual angle. Anthropic's prospectus says that if at least two of Moody's, S&P and Fitch give it investment grade, it may choose to release the collateral backing one of its credit lines.

Blackstone's role

Blackstone is not a rating agency but one of the large investment groups financing Anthropic's infrastructure. On October 26, it announced, together with Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley, a $63 billion transaction to fund the purchase of Broadcom equipment that will then be leased to the maker of Claude. According to the announcement, Blackstone is the sole provider of the committed portion of the second-lien financing, which ranks below the main debt in repayment priority.

The IPO itself has already taken a formal step. On October 26, Anthropic filed its prospectus with the SEC to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, though it had not yet set how many shares it will offer or at what price.