SpaceX has secured a binding commitment for roughly $40 billion to finance AI chips and related data center equipment, it disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday. The company called it the “largest committed GPU financing.”
An entity managed by New York-based Apollo Global Management will buy the chips and related server hardware, then lease them to SpaceX. Each lease will run for about five to five-and-a-quarter years from the delivery of its equipment.
The lease funds a growing compute buildout
SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said the lease “diversifies our funding sources and addresses a notable portion of the funding required to deliver on our growth plans.” He said SpaceX is seeing “less than one-year payback periods” on AI infrastructure investments as it expands computing capacity for Grok and its cloud services.
Apollo said the financing will help provide Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips for SpaceX’s “terrestrial compute buildout.” The spending adds to SpaceX’s AI infrastructure expansion alongside its Starlink and launch businesses.
Read nextSpaceX reports $14.6 billion in Q3 revenue as AI business growsSpaceX’s AI segment, which includes the Grok chatbot, the Cursor coding tool and its cloud compute business, beat investor expectations in the third quarter. It generated $7.6 billion of the company’s $14.6 billion in revenue, more than Starlink and rocket launches combined.
Capital expenditures rose to nearly $20 billion from $6.9 billion a year earlier. On SpaceX’s October 20 earnings call, Johnsen said the company expects to spend $35 billion to $40 billion in the fourth quarter alone.
Musk points to pressure on AI compute firms
The lease comes as investors grow wary of heavy spending and limited profits among AI infrastructure companies. SpaceX has been able to tap Wall Street, while Musk argued on Sunday that debt markets have largely shut out companies without substantial revenue beyond AI data centers.
Citing SpaceX’s “investment-grade” status and cash flow from Starlink and rocket launches, Musk pointed to the more than 200 neocloud companies built solely to rent GPUs for AI workloads. “That means the 200+ neoclouds are going to see guppy-level death and consolidation,” he wrote on X. “Some will make it through, but not many.”
SpaceX expects the financing to close by year-end, subject to closing conditions. The leases are expected to begin in the first half of 2027 as the equipment arrives.
