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The $35B Warning Sign in Private Credit
Covering private credit`s fundraising concentration.
Good morning, ! Today we're covering private credit`s fundraising concentration. Apollo and Blackstone closed a massive $35B financing deal for Anthropic, marking one of the largest private credit transactions ever and pulling AI infrastructure further into structured finance.
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PRIVATE CREDIT CORNER
The Fundraising Barbell Gets Heavier
Private credit fundraising is no longer broad based. It is consolidating fast around the industry’s largest managers. McKinsey data shows the top five firms captured 18% of annual closed end private credit fundraising in 2019. By 2025, that figure climbed to 37%. Meanwhile, the long tail of managers collapsed from 11% share to just 1%.
The middle is getting squeezed too. Managers ranked 26 to 100 fell from 36% of fundraising share to 27% over the same period, while firms ranked 11 to 25 stayed relatively flat at around 22%.
The implication is clear: LPs increasingly want scale, platform breadth, and perceived safety in a market where underwriting discipline matters more than ever. Larger managers can offer direct origination, sector specialization, and financing certainty across cycles. Smaller lenders may still win on niche expertise, but raising blind pool capital is becoming materially harder.
Bottom line: private credit is starting to resemble private equity. Capital concentration is accelerating, and fundraising itself is becoming a competitive moat. (More)
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DEAL OF THE WEEK
Apollo and Blackstone Just Turned AI Chips Into Infrastructure
Apollo and Blackstone have closed a staggering $35B financing package for Anthropic, creating one of the largest private credit transactions ever executed and pushing AI infrastructure deeper into structured finance territory.
The deal finances advanced AI chips through a special purpose vehicle that acquires the hardware and leases it back to Anthropic. Think less corporate loan, more aircraft leasing for artificial intelligence. The structure blends asset backed lending, project finance, and private credit into a new template for funding compute intensive businesses.
What makes this transaction notable is not just the size, but the architecture. Senior tranches received investment grade treatment and benefit from residual value protection tied to Broadcom, while junior layers absorb higher performance risk in exchange for richer yields. Roughly half the debt was syndicated to institutional investors, with insurers and long duration capital providers stepping in aggressively.
The strategic takeaway is bigger than Anthropic. AI is becoming an infrastructure asset class. Private credit firms are no longer just financing buyouts and cash flowing businesses. They are financing compute capacity itself.
For sponsors and allocators, this signals where the next wave of structured credit competition is heading: data centers, semiconductors, and hardware ecosystems that increasingly resemble utilities more than software companies. (More)
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