Bloomberg News reported on the 18th (local time) that the revolving credit facility being pursued by artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic ahead of its initial public offering (IPO) could exceed the original target of $10 billion (about 14 trillion won).
A revolving credit facility is a financing method that allows corporations to borrow and repay funds as needed within a set limit, similar to an overdraft account. Anthropic is arranging this credit facility through a syndicate structure in which multiple banks share the funding.
According to Bloomberg, banks seeking to participate as underwriters for Anthropic's IPO are competitively increasing the amount of credit they are offering. As a result, the total limit is increasingly likely to exceed the original target of $10 billion. However, since negotiations are ongoing, Anthropic may still cap the final limit at $10 billion or below.
Anthropic asked the most active banks in lending for about $1.25 billion, the next-tier banks for about $1 billion, and the remaining banks for $750 million or less, according to people familiar with the matter.
When multiple banks jointly provide a credit facility like this, the larger the participation, the higher the fees they can receive. They also become more likely to take on key roles in the upcoming IPO.
SpaceX, which recently went public, also expanded its revolving credit facility from $1.5 billion to $5 billion in May, one month before its IPO. Many of the banks that took part in SpaceX's IPO were also said to be participating in the current negotiations to expand Anthropic's credit facility.
Last year, Anthropic secured a five-year, $2.5 billion revolving credit facility from Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG).