August 15 2026 | Deals | Ai Infrastructure | Utilities & Infrastructure
Increasingly, not the tenant. In the AI infrastructure deals now setting precedent, the payment obligation is supported by a third party guarantor, a parent, or a contractual wrap, and the effective credit exposure sits with that supporting party rather than the company signing the lease. Diligence needs to follow the credit, not the signature.
That is a short answer to a question most deal teams are not yet asking. Here is why it now matters.
The round trip nobody has named
In September 2024, Macquarie Asset Management and PSP Investments sold AirTrunk to a Blackstone led consortium with CPP Investments. Implied enterprise value was over A$24 billion. It was the largest data centre transaction ever completed globally, the largest Australian M&A deal of that year, and one of the largest in Australian history.
That transaction ran on Ansarada.
Two years later, in August 2026, Macquarie Asset Management announced it would build the American version of the same asset class from scratch.
Alongside GIC, Singapore's sovereign investor, MAM managed funds will own Theseus Infrastructure. The platform will develop, operate and lease purpose built data centres to Anthropic under long term agreements. Anthropic is the anchor tenant. The two investors fund the majority of the equity on each project. Initial focus is the United States.
So Australian capital sold the hyperscale platform at the top of one cycle and is now originating the next one offshore. Good story. Not the important one.
What was announced, and what wasn't
The confirmed facts are narrow.
Theseus will develop, own, operate and lease data centre infrastructure to Anthropic under long term agreements. Anthropic is anchor tenant across the sites. Funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management, together with GIC, will own the platform and fund the majority of the equity per project. Initial development focus is the US. Anthropic has committed to cover consumer electricity price increases attributable to the sites.
What was not disclosed is more instructive. No total platform size. No target site count. No lease tenor. No confirmation of whether Anthropic takes equity in the platform. For a deal being read across the market as a landmark, the public terms would not fill a term sheet.
The market is pricing a structure it cannot see. That is worth sitting with.
Compute is being financed like a toll road
The template here is not a technology template. It is core infrastructure. A long dated lease. A single dominant tenant. Purpose built assets with limited alternative use. Patient institutional equity sitting behind construction.
Macquarie has run that playbook across airports, roads and utilities for three decades. Applying it to accelerator capacity is a deliberate reclassification. It says AI compute has cash flow characteristics stable enough to carry infrastructure grade equity and infrastructure grade leverage.
Whether that holds is a live question. Data centres depreciate faster than runways. But the reclassification is already changing who turns up in processes, what return thresholds get applied, and how diligence gets scoped. That part is not theoretical.
Two structures, one lesson
Here is where I think most commentary is getting sloppy, including some of the coverage of Theseus itself. There are two different things happening and they are being read as one.
The first is chip financing. In June 2026, Anthropic closed roughly $35 billion of debt to lease chips across five US data centre sites. The financing was led by Apollo Global Management with Blackstone, structured through the Broadcom AI XPV platform. It sits off Anthropic's balance sheet. Google agreed to backstop the lease payments at each of the five locations. Broadcom added a residual value guarantee on the senior tranche, absorbing the shortfall if the hardware cannot be resold for enough to cover the loan.
The second is property. Theseus is development equity in physical assets. Land, power, shell, fitout. Different risk, different holders, different remedies.
They are related but they are not the same object, and the diligence scope for one does not transfer to the other. What does transfer is the lesson underneath both.
You are no longer underwriting the tenant
In a conventional single tenant infrastructure lease, diligence concentrates on the tenant's covenant. You underwrite the counterparty's ability to pay rent for the life of the lease. Credit quality of the tenant is the asset.
In the AI infrastructure deals now setting precedent, that logic bends.
Take the facts as they stand. Anthropic has no public credit rating. It also raised approximately $65 billion in late May 2026 at a $965 billion post money valuation and has filed confidentially for a US listing. Anyone reading this who works in infrastructure credit already knows both things, so let me be direct about why the second does not cancel the first. Equity value is not a lease covenant. A tenant can be extraordinarily well capitalised and still not be the party a lender is actually relying on. In the June chip financing, the lenders were not underwriting the tenant. They were underwriting Google and Broadcom.
And the detail that should interest every deal team: the reported Google backstop activates only once the facilities are operational and the lease commences. Construction risk sits outside the wrap.
So the question for this cycle is not whether the tenant can pay. It is a longer list.
Who actually stands behind the payment obligation. The tenant, a parent, a third party guarantor, or a contractual wrap with no balance sheet owner.
When that support switches on. Financial close, practical completion, or commencement of the lease term.
What it covers. Full rent, project debt service, a capped tranche, or power obligations only.
What the guarantor was paid to take the risk. On this one the market has already shown its hand. Google held roughly 14% of Anthropic, has committed up to $40 billion, and the financing locks Anthropic into Google designed silicon for years. Broadcom took residual value exposure on hardware it makes. Neither of those is charity. The compensation tells you how each party priced the risk it accepted, which is usually more honest than anything in the press release.
What survives a restructuring. Does the guarantee follow the lease, or fall away on assignment.
Where construction risk sits, and who absorbs schedule slippage on a grid connection.
I am not going to tell anyone how to price these assets. But in the processes we see, the teams still running a pure tenant credit model tend to arrive at a different number from the teams pricing off the guarantor, and they are not losing those bids on relationship.
Every one of these processes has a counterparty, a diligence scope, and a data room.
Ansarada has supported some of the largest digital infrastructure transactions in the Asia Pacific, including the A$24 billion acquisition of AirTrunk by Blackstone and CPP Investments.
Deal count, not deal value
There is a second order effect that matters more to advisers than to principals.
A platform like Theseus does not generate one transaction. Each site generates a stack of them. Land acquisition. Grid connection and network agreements. Power purchase agreements. EPC contracting. JV formation and shareholder arrangements. Project debt. Eventual refinancing or partial sell down.
The Australian precedent is right there. Blackstone's acquisition of AirTrunk was one headline. The platform underneath it required, and still requires, a continuous pipeline of separate processes, and AirTrunk has since expanded into India and now operates across six countries.
For advisers sizing this opportunity, deal count is the relevant metric. Deal value is the vanity metric. A single announced platform with no disclosed dollar figure can generate more billable processes over five years than a mega deal that closes once and never comes back.
Every one of those processes has a counterparty, a diligence scope, and a data room.
The uncomfortable read for ANZ
Australia built genuine world class capability in this asset class. AirTrunk, NEXTDC, CDC, Macquarie Technology Group, DigiCo, Goodman's pipeline. Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra remain tier one hubs, and Sydney alone accounts for the majority of upcoming capacity in the region.
But the capital that proved the model here is now deploying into a market where scale, power availability and tenant demand are larger by an order of magnitude.
The question domestic operators are now being asked is not whether the capital exists. It is whether they can compete for it against a US pipeline being originated by their own former shareholders. That is a harder question than it was in 2024, and it deserves a better answer than optimism.
Platform origination runs on Infrastructure procurement as much as it runs on M&A.
Grid connection, EPC and power agreements all need a controlled process.
Frequently asked questions
Who guarantees the rent in an AI data centre lease?
Often a third party rather than the tenant. Where a tenant is unrated or carries large uncontracted obligations, project financing frequently depends on credit support from a parent, a strategic partner or a supplier. In Anthropic's June 2026 chip financing, Google backstopped lease payments at five sites and Broadcom provided a residual value guarantee on the senior tranche.
What is Theseus Infrastructure?
A platform established in August 2026 by Anthropic, Macquarie Asset Management and GIC to develop, own, operate and lease purpose built data centres to Anthropic under long term agreements, with an initial focus on the United States.
Who owns Theseus Infrastructure?
Funds managed by Macquarie Asset Management, together with GIC, own the platform and fund the majority of the equity for each project. Macquarie Group itself is the manager, not the balance sheet owner. The capital is client capital.
What is an anchor tenant structure in data centre deals?
An arrangement in which a single dominant customer commits to lease the majority of a facility's capacity under a long term agreement, giving developers and lenders enough contracted cash flow visibility to support project financing.
Why does the guarantor matter more than the tenant?
Because the effective credit exposure sits with the guarantor. Diligence needs to be scoped to the guarantee's activation triggers, coverage and survival terms rather than the tenant's own covenant.
When does a lease guarantee typically activate?
It varies, and the variance is the point. Support can attach at financial close, at practical completion, or at commencement of the lease term. The reported Google backstop begins only once the facilities are operational, which leaves construction risk outside the wrap.
How large is the Theseus platform?
No total investment figure, site count or lease tenor has been publicly disclosed.
This article is general commentary. It is not investment, legal, financial or tax advice, and it does not take account of the objectives, financial situation or needs of any person. Readers should obtain their own professional advice before acting on any information in this article.
All facts are drawn from publicly available sources as at 15 August 2026 and are accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication. Deal terms described here are as publicly reported. Where terms have not been disclosed, we have said so rather than inferred them.
Ansarada was not engaged as an adviser on Theseus Infrastructure and has no relationship with the parties to that transaction. References to the AirTrunk transaction reflect publicly disclosed information.
Third party names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification purposes only
Sources cited
Macquarie Group, "Anthropic, Macquarie Asset Management, and GIC announce strategic partnership to develop dedicated data center infrastructure at scale", 10 August 2026. https://www.macquarie.com/au/en/about/news/2026/anthropic-mam-gic-data-centre-infrastructure-partnership.html
Bloomberg, "Google's Backstops Underpin $35 Billion Chip Deal for Anthropic", 9 June 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-09/google-s-backstops-underpin-35-billion-chip-deal-for-anthropic
Bloomberg, "Anthropic, Macquarie and GIC Form Venture for AI Data Centers", 10 August 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-10/anthropic-macquarie-and-gic-form-venture-for-ai-data-centers
Blackstone, "Blackstone Announces Agreement to Acquire AirTrunk in a A$24B Transaction", 4 September 2024. https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-announces-agreement-to-acquire-airtrunk-in-a-a24b-transaction/
Data Center Dynamics, "GIC and Macquarie form Theseus Infrastructure to serve Anthropic's data center needs", August 2026. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/gic-and-macquarie-form-theseus-infrastructure-to-serve-anthropics-data-centers-needs/
