SpaceX locks in about $40 billion to buy AI chips through a lease deal with Apollo
Redacción IvokaOct 27, 3:00 PM 3 min
An Apollo-managed entity will buy the chips and lease them to SpaceX for about five years or a bit more.
SpaceX disclosed in a regulatory filing on Monday, October 26, a binding commitment for roughly $40 billion to finance AI chips and data center equipment. The company called it the "largest committed GPU financing."
How it works
- An entity managed by Apollo Global Management will buy the chips and servers, then lease them to SpaceX.
- Leases will last about five to five-and-a-quarter years, starting as each tranche of equipment is delivered.
- According to the regulatory filing, SpaceX expects the deal to close by year-end, subject to conditions; leases would begin in the first half of 2027. However, according to CNBC, Elon Musk wrote on X on Sunday that SpaceX had already closed the financing, adding that it consists primarily of callable debt for GPUs expected to arrive in the first and second quarters of 2027.
- Apollo said the money will help deliver Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips.
Why it matters. According to CNBC, the deal underscores the AI boom's enormous capital needs, as technology companies pour billions of dollars into advanced chips and data centers. According to TechCrunch, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said it diversifies the company's funding sources and that it sees payback periods under one year on its AI infrastructure, which powers Grok and its cloud services. TechCrunch also reports that the company's capital expenditures rose to nearly $20 billion, from $6.9 billion a year earlier.
For a small business, the practical takeaway is that building and running AI takes enormous sums of money, and companies are looking for new ways to pay for it.
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