SpaceX secures $40 billion in GPU financing from Apollo Global Management

SpaceX has locked in a binding commitment for roughly $40 billion in financing to buy AI chips and related data center equipment, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing on Monday. SpaceX called the deal the largest committed GPU (graphics processing unit) financing it has arranged.

Under the agreement, an entity managed by Apollo Global Management, the New York-based private equity firm, will purchase the chips and server hardware, then lease the equipment back to SpaceX. The leases run about five to five-and-a-quarter years, starting as each batch of equipment is delivered, according to the filing. SpaceX expects the deal to close by the end of the year, subject to standard closing conditions, with leases beginning in the first half of 2027 as the hardware arrives.

SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said the lease gives the company another way to pay for its AI buildout without relying solely on traditional debt markets. “This lease diversifies our funding sources and addresses a notable portion of the funding required to deliver on our growth plans,” Johnsen said in a statement Monday. He added that SpaceX is seeing “less than one-year payback periods” on its AI infrastructure spending as it scales compute to power its Grok chatbot and cloud services. Apollo said the financing will help deliver Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips for what it described as SpaceX’s “terrestrial compute buildout.”

A strong quarter behind the deal

The financing follows a strong third quarter for SpaceX’s AI business. The AI segment, which includes Grok, the Cursor coding tool and SpaceX’s cloud compute business, brought in $7.6 billion of the company’s $14.6 billion in total revenue for the quarter, more than Starlink and rocket launches combined, according to the company. Capital expenditures surged to nearly $20 billion, up from $6.9 billion a year earlier, as SpaceX expanded its compute footprint. On an October 20 earnings call, Johnsen said SpaceX expects to spend $35 billion to $40 billion on capital expenditures in the fourth quarter alone.

The deal comes during a difficult stretch in debt markets for AI infrastructure companies, as investors grow wary of rising capital spending paired with limited profits. SpaceX, however, had no apparent trouble securing the financing, and CEO Elon Musk used the announcement to contrast the company with rivals. Pointing to SpaceX’s investment-grade credit status and steady cash flow from Starlink and rocket launches, Musk argued on social platform X that debt markets have largely closed to companies that have no major revenue stream outside AI data centers. He said that leaves more than 200 so-called neocloud companies, which rent out GPU capacity for AI workloads, facing “guppy-level death and consolidation,” adding that “some will make it through, but not many.”

What happens next depends on execution. The deal is expected to close by year-end, with the first leased equipment arriving and leases starting in the first half of 2027. Whether other AI infrastructure companies without SpaceX’s diversified revenue can arrange similar financing, or face the consolidation Musk described, remains an open question.