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AS Alexander Saeedy On The Journal.

“I've been comparing it to the parent of a child that's trying to rent an apartment, essentially. And the kid is maybe going to make a ton of money one day. But right now on paper, they look pretty broke. So Broadcom is kind of going to the landlord, which in this case is the banks, and saying, hey, we got them. If for whatever reason they can't make their rent payment, just call us and we got you.”

The Journal. · October 2026

“I've been comparing it to the parent of a child that's trying to rent an apartment, essentially. And the kid is maybe going to make a ton of money one day. But right now on paper, they look pretty broke. So Broadcom is kind of going to the landlord, which in this case is the banks, and saying, hey, we got them. If for whatever reason they can't make their rent payment, just call us and we got you.” — Alexander Saeedy, The Journal.

Context

The episode is about financing for a roughly $63 billion deal in which Broadcom supplies chips to Anthropic. Broadcom has a strong credit rating and Anthropic does not, so Broadcom is backing the financing. Saeedy uses a rental-apartment analogy to explain Broadcom's role with the banks.

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Transcript

The Journal. Around 09:48 into the episode
Alexander Saeedy

They are the supplier to Anthropic, right? Like they want Anthropic to buy chips from it. And Broadcom is like kind of solving a problem for itself as well as for Anthropic, which is how can we help you get the money to pay us, essentially.

Ryan Knutson

And Broadcom was in a good position to handle the financing for this deal because unlike Anthropic, Broadcom has a great credit rating.

Alexander Saeedy

So they are kind of coming in, and I've been kind of comparing it to like the parent of a child that's trying to rent an apartment, essentially. And the kid is like maybe going to like, you know, make a ton of money one day. But right now on paper, they look pretty broke. So Broadcom is kind of going to the landlord, which in this case is the banks, and saying like, hey, like we got them. If for whatever reason they can't make their rent payment, just call us and we got you.

Ryan Knutson

Ultimately, Anthropic would still be the one that has to pay the rent. Broadcom is acting as the intermediary with their name on the lease. And how did banks receive this proposal from Broadcom and Anthropic?

Alexander Saeedy

You know, the banks were kind of looking at the amount of risk they were signing up to in this and getting pretty nervous. So the hurdle was to overcome both the financial challenges of doing this deal and the sort of like mental challenge of can we convince investors that this is worth committing…

Ryan Knutson

How Broadcom and Anthropic got the deal over the finish line?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from The Journal.

“In a circular financing arrangement, I might have a lot of money and you might not have that much money, but I can just give you some of my money that you can then give back to me. And it appears like, wow, you've paid me all this money to buy all these super valuable chips. Circular financing is a concern because essentially all this money can make companies appear to be more valuable than they really are. It can make revenues be higher than they are. It just sort of adds more air to the bubble in a way.” — Alexander Saeedy, The Journal. “Hollywood is the most gossipy industry in the world. So the fact that they kept it so secret, even within their own company, was extraordinary. And at first, it was kind of necessary for them as they figured out what this film was going to be. And then as it got closer to completion, A24 kind of realized that the secrecy would actually be a really effective marketing tool.” — Ben Fritz, The Journal.