Anthropic was assigned a credit rating one notch below investment grade by Kroll Bond Rating Agency this year, marking a strong grade for the AI start-up despite its limited financial disclosures.
The Claude maker received an issuer rating of double B plus from KBRA in June, the highest speculative-grade score, in the run-up to securing a $35bn chip financing led by Apollo, according to documents seen by the FT.
The rating action, which has not previously been reported, shows Anthropic is close to achieving the investment-grade status that would allow the start-up to lower its borrowing costs and tap a wider pool of institutional investors including life insurance companies and pension funds.
Bankers for Anthropic and rival OpenAI have lobbied the largest rating agencies to grant the AI labs investment-grade ratings once they go public. Investors expect the initial public offering this year to hit a valuation of more than $2tn.
Anthropic expects to spend more than $500bn on computing resources and infrastructure over the next decade. That effort — which is crucial to the continuation of an investment boom that has powered the growth of US equity markets — will hinge in large part on its credit rating once public.
KBRA is a smaller rating agency compared with Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, which will ultimately determine Anthropic’s post-IPO credit status.
KBRA’s rating came despite Anthropic’s limited financial disclosures. The report was based on select financial information Anthropic provided, including revenue, adjusted operating income and annualised run-rate revenue in the first quarter of 2026, as well as an internal forecast for second-quarter results, according to the documents.
However, Anthropic’s disclosure to KBRA excluded several important financial metrics, including free cash flow and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. Credit rating analysts had to come up with their own estimates based on assumptions, the documents show.
Given the limited information, KBRA produced a “risk score” to assess Anthropic’s creditworthiness rather than the traditional full financial models.
KBRA and Anthropic declined to comment.
About $4.4bn of junior debt within the $35bn June financing package exposes lenders directly to Anthropic’s credit risk, while the remainder was secured by a guarantee from chipmaker Broadcom.
The junior debt received a double B plus rating with stable outlook from KBRA based on its assessment of the AI company’s finances. The debt was sold with a yield of about 8.5 per cent, the FT reported at the time, while the senior debt carried an interest rate of 5.75 per cent.
Anthropic told investors at a pre-IPO presentation on Wednesday that its revenue rose nearly 50 per cent to $16.8bn in the third quarter and that it had been profitable on an adjusted basis for two consecutive quarters.
However, its growth rate has slowed from the blistering pace it set earlier in the year and the latest financials came in lower than the most bullish investor predictions from the summer.
At the time of the rating decision, Anthropic estimated $10.9bn in second-quarter revenue, but the figure came in higher at $11.5bn, according to people familiar with the matter.
The five-year-old company had zero debt on its own balance sheet as of late June, having relied on more creditworthy business partners and special-purpose vehicles for funding.
Anthropic could also issue up to $42bn of notes that can be converted into shares in the AI lab in the future to pay for leasing semiconductors from Broadcom, the people said.
KBRA was not provided with the detailed terms of the convertible notes, the people added.
Anthropic’s credit rating has a significant impact on its upcoming financing efforts, with Wall Street banks beginning to assemble a $60bn deal to help the company acquire more custom AI chips co-developed by Google and Broadcom. The new debt package would include $18bn of junior debt backed by Anthropic’s rent payments on chips.
