OpenAI and Anthropic are working with bankers to secure investment-grade credit ratings ahead of potential initial public offerings, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. The goal is access to the $11.7 trillion corporate bond market at borrowing costs that do not price them like venture-stage startups, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which lead the two companies’ IPO preparations, have opened talks with rating agencies. Discussions are ongoing and no final decisions have been reached, and neither company has publicly confirmed an IPO roadmap. The FT reported that a senior credit analyst framed the pitch plainly: Wall Street wants agencies to treat the two as soon-to-be cash-rich public companies rather than as speculative credits burning investor capital.
Why the rating matters
Both companies carry large debt loads tied to data center buildouts and have leaned on credit lines from major banks. Anthropic has committed to multi-year data center leases, including a 20-year, 191 MW deal with Riot Platforms valued at $9.1 billion in base revenue. OpenAI’s infrastructure pledges run into the hundreds of billions, including chip vendor financing where Nvidia’s $105 billion support for an Ohio data center site includes a condition that OpenAI secure a satisfactory credit rating.
An investment-grade rating, typically BBB- or higher, would let pension funds and insurers buy the debt, which most are barred from holding in speculative-grade form. It would also cut coupon costs on future bond issuance by hundreds of basis points relative to what a junk-rated AI issuer would pay. The rating conversation is not hypothetical; it directly gates one of OpenAI’s largest existing financing commitments.
| Company | Key debt-linked commitment | Status |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | $105B Nvidia chip support, Ohio site | Conditional on satisfactory rating |
| Anthropic | $9.1B, 20-year Riot data center lease | Signed, through 2048 |
| Both | Bank credit lines, IPO prep | Ratings talks ongoing |
The circular financing question
Ratings agencies will have to decide how to treat the web of vendor financing behind the buildout. Nvidia funds customers who buy Nvidia chips, and similar structures run through AMD and Broadcom arrangements. Agencies have historically looked through circular support when assessing standalone creditworthiness, and the FT reporting suggests bankers want the agencies to focus on post-IPO liquidity instead.
There is a timing tension. Anthropic ended its pursuit of Decart this week, a $6 billion acquisition that would have complicated its pre-IPO financial story, a move that reads as balance-sheet housekeeping ahead of a listing. OpenAI ran a tender offer this summer at an $852 billion valuation. Both companies are cleaning up structures that public market investors and rating committees tend to question.
No filing has been made, and both companies declined to comment on IPO timing through the usual channels. What is clear is that the debt side of the AI buildout has caught up with the equity side. The next signal to watch is whether any agency puts an unsolicited rating on either company, which would start the public clock on the conversation regardless of whether an IPO prospectus follows.
The scale of what a rating would unlock is hard to overstate. Corporate bond funds alone hold trillions in mandates that require investment-grade paper, and the FT noted that a senior analyst at one agency said the banks are arguing both companies will soon be flush with post-IPO liquidity, minimizing their overall debt impact. That framing asks agencies to rate a future state rather than the current one, which is where the negotiation sits.
Anthropic’s compute commitments show why the cost of capital matters more each quarter. The Riot lease alone averages roughly $455 million a year in base rent through 2048, with extension options that could take the total to $16.1 billion. Debt raised a few points cheaper compounds into billions of dollars of preserved margin over that horizon, and every AI lab watching the talks understands the arithmetic.
For OpenAI, the rating conversation also touches its restructuring. The company converted its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation earlier this year, clearing a hurdle that once made any credit assessment awkward. Its commercial revenue has grown fast enough that some analysts argue standalone creditworthiness is no longer a stretch, even before an IPO adds a public equity currency.
Agencies have been burned before by rating infrastructure-heavy newcomers at the top of a spending cycle, and the memory of telecom-era defaults still shapes their committee culture. The likely outcome is a split decision: one agency moving first with a low investment-grade rating tied to covenants around vendor financing, the other holding out for a completed IPO. Either way, the fact that the conversations are happening now, before any S-1, tells you the debt market has become the binding constraint on the AI buildout, not the equity market.
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