InfraCompute Weekly · No. 1 · 30 October 2026 · Deals from 14 to 28 October

Short money, long assets.

A US$63bn chip financing for Anthropic, a US$40bn GPU lease commitment and a US$3.5bn bridge for GPUs and data centres.

Randeep Bubbra | Lawyer | Making the next generation of infrastructure financeable

The week in one paragraph

Nebius signed a US$3.5bn senior secured facility with Citi on 17 October and announced it on 22 October. It runs for 364 days and starts at Term SOFR plus 2.75%, rising to a maximum of 3.50%. The money will fund data centre development, GPU purchases and general corporate purposes (Nebius, Form 6-K). In July, Nebius's first secured facility was US$775m, priced at SOFR plus 2.50% and due in 2030 (Nebius). The new money is larger, shorter and slightly more expensive. On 24 October, SpaceX signed a binding commitment letter for a master finance lease of GPUs and related equipment with an entity managed by Apollo. SpaceX expects principal payments of about US$40bn over lease schedules of five to five and a quarter years (SpaceX, Form 8-K). It has not closed yet. On 26 October, Broadcom announced a US$63bn financing for a new special purpose vehicle that will buy Broadcom AI accelerators and networking systems and lease them to Anthropic. Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley are arranging the first lien and Blackstone is providing the second lien (Broadcom; Form 8-K). The same week, market reports put high-yield bond issuance by US data centre developers and AI cloud providers in 2026 at several times the 2025 total. The exact figures are reported, not taken from filings. Capital is still there. The question for lenders is increasingly what refinances it.

Deal sheet

On my desk

A lease that amortises with the chip

SpaceX has chosen a finance lease rather than a loan. The lessor buys the GPU pods and owns them, and each delivery gets its own schedule. Rent is paid quarterly in advance and repays one-twentieth of the financed cost each quarter, so each tranche pays down over its five-year term, roughly in step with the working life of the chips (Form 8-K). The points to read when the master lease is signed are the conditions to each tranche, what happens if delivery slips, who carries the residual value and the loss and return mechanics. Apollo and Goldman Sachs led it, with anchor commitments from funds managed by BlackRock, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and KKR (Apollo). Set beside Nebius, the same chips are being financed by a one-year bridge and by a five-year lease.

Who carries the residual value

The Anthropic financing uses the same pattern with one more layer of support. The SPV owns the racks and Anthropic leases them; its S-1 puts rent under its Broadcom master equipment leases at about US$161.2bn over five years, excluding interest (Form S-1). Broadcom backstops the lenders: if Anthropic defaults and the racks are sold, Broadcom pays the gap between 72.5% of the amounts outstanding on the lease and the sale value, up to about US$43bn once the racks are deployed (Form 8-K). For the first lien lenders, that moves much of the risk on the value of the chips onto the chipmaker. The points to read are the trigger for the support, how the 72.5% is measured as the lease amortises, and Broadcom's rights to take over the lease or buy back the racks.

Why a 364-day facility

A one-year secured loan against long-life assets is a bridge. The lender's credit work centres on the exit as much as on the assets. Expect the documents to focus on the take-out route (a term loan, bonds or asset-backed notes), on mandatory prepayment from that refinancing, and on a margin that steps up over time, as it does here. For the borrower it buys speed and size, at the price of refinancing within twelve months. Nebius shares fell about 6% on the day of the announcement (24/7 Wall St.), which suggests investors read tenor as closely as size.

High yield is now a core market for data centres

Sub-investment-grade bonds this year have, by market reports, financed projects leased to or backed by names including Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave and Fluidstack, at yields reported to be close to 10%. Deals with public filings are in the deal register. In high yield, the protection sits in the documents rather than in the rating. Investors will push hardest on completion and lease-commencement conditions, cash trap triggers and limits on further debt.

Upsizing the loan the banks already know

DayOne's Johor loan grew to US$7.2bn through an amend and extend rather than a new financing (record). Lenders who already hold the security and know the campus can take more of it quickly, with the security package left in place. The points to read in an upsize of this kind are the incremental facility mechanics, whether the margin resets for the whole loan, and how new phases join the security package.

Term of the week: 364-day facility

A loan or commitment that ends one day short of a year. Historically, a bank's undrawn commitment of under a year attracted a lower capital charge than a longer one, so short facilities were cheaper for banks to offer. The final Basel III rules narrow that difference, but the label has stuck. In practice, a 364-day facility is a bridge. Read it with its exit: the refinancing it expects, any extension option, and what happens if the take-out market is shut when it falls due. See the glossary for related terms.

Power, policy and regulation

• US Treasury proposed replacement outbound investment regulations on 26 October, covering AI systems and semiconductors in countries of concern. Comments are due by 7 December (Federal Register; tracker).
• The UK Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, which brings data centres of 1MW or more under the NIS rules with Ofcom as regulator, had its Lords report stage on 26 October (UK Parliament; tracker).
• Google and Entergy Arkansas will add a 440MW power purchase agreement and support two battery projects for a West Memphis data centre (DCD, reported).
• Amazon and AEP will study up to 960MW of X-energy small modular reactors in Indiana (DCD, reported).
• A US Senate bill offers data centres a faster route to grid power, at a price some in the industry say is too high (Bisnow).

On the radar

• Anthropic filed its Form S-1 on 26 October; rack deliveries under the Broadcom financing are expected from calendar 2027.
• 2 November: Lords third reading of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.
• 7 December: comments close on the US outbound investment proposal.
• SpaceX expects to sign the master finance lease before the end of 2026, with schedules starting in the first half of 2027 as GPUs arrive.
• Illinois voters face non-binding data centre referendums on the November ballot (Bisnow).
• CBRE and Onnec aim to complete by the end of 2026.
• DayOne has filed for a US listing, according to reports in October.
• The Nebius facility falls due in October 2027. Watch for the refinancing route.

From InfraCompute

Nebius's starting margin of 275bp sits inside the 225 to 750bp range of disclosed GPU loan margins. Compare it with the other disclosed facilities →

New this week for in-house teams: the contract library of filed customer contracts, leases and guarantees, what is market on the terms you negotiate first, and a regulatory tracker read from the official texts. Start at For in-house counsel, and follow a company, clause or regulation to get an email when something new is filed.

Randeep Bubbra | Lawyer | Making the next generation of infrastructure financeable. Written in a personal capacity from public sources. This is not legal or financial advice. Views are my own and not those of any employer or client. Mention of a company or transaction does not mean that I or my firm acted on it. Send a correction.