The 10-year treasury yield is about 5%, national average 30-year fixed home mortgage is about 7.2%.

In that context I don’t think I’d describe 10% as “high risk.”

Well, this website https://usinterestrates.com/corporate-bond-yields says that currently, B-grade bonds go at around 8.5%. So bonds paying 10% would be below B, pretty much in junk bond territory https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/junkbond.asp .

So maybe it's not high risk enough for you, but it is definitely high risk enough for the market.

But the best approach is just comparing rates. Go to https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/pdf/bo... , and you will see a huge list of companies whose bonds are classified by armies of analysts as "less risky" than these 10% Anthropic bonds. Is Anthropic less risky than AT&T, or BP, or Firestone Tire & Rubber Co? The market says "no".

This isn't even speculations, Blackstone has said that Anthropic will literally be in the "junk" category: https://www.ft.com/content/59383c7f-8d82-493f-bf01-d2e862a10...

and you'd be thus mistaken

currently US long term bonds have very low yield and are being issued less as usual buyers move to gold/stock -- trust in US gov. has eroded especially in fiscal matters. The budget keeps growing, interest rates are still too low to combat inflation and debt is ever-expanding, without drastic measures taken to stabilize the situation: thus, high bond yield - we pay you premium to have at least someone buy it due to trustworthiness not being the sole attractor anymore

Indices are putting high yield at about 8% right now. More importantly lenders are asking Anthropic for higher yields than they were months ago meaning they're headed in wrong direction quick.

At a 10% yield, depending on the maturity profile, it is well into "junk" territory and represents nearly a 8-9% bankruptcy risk annually.

Recently CoreWeave's bond yields spiked to 16% which represent an 18.8% probability of default per year.