SpaceX is in talks to secure $40 billion in financing for the purchase of Nvidia chips. Elon Musk’s company intends to use the funds to finance the further expansion of its AI infrastructure. If the plans go ahead, it will be one of the largest debt financings for AI hardware to date.
According to Bloomberg, discussions with banks and investors are still in the early stages. The financing would consist of approximately $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade bonds. Apollo Global Management is reportedly playing a leading role, while asset manager Pimco is also reviewing the transaction.
The Financial Times previously reported on the plans. According to the newspaper, the financing is expected to be finalized in 2027. SpaceX, Nvidia, and Apollo have not responded to the report.
AI requires increasing amounts of capital
The size of the potential loan illustrates just how much capital is now required for large-scale AI infrastructure. Demand for accelerators has surged as companies build ever-larger clusters to train and run AI models. As a result, not only chips but also data center capacity and energy infrastructure require investments in the billions.
SpaceX is not alone in this. Bloomberg recently reported that a banking consortium led by Broadcom is working on $60 billion in financing for AI chips, including for Anthropic. Nvidia is also working with major investors on financing structures that allow customers to access the necessary computing power.
Hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips
The scale of the hardware demand within Musk’s companies is evident from the expansion of xAI’s Colossus 2. According to Musk, that cluster near Memphis now has 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300s. Hundreds of thousands of accelerators are set to be added there in the coming months.
A separate financing structure was also set up earlier for that project. Apollo was involved in a $7 billion financing deal in which a special purpose vehicle finances the Nvidia hardware, allowing xAI to subsequently use the chips for Colossus 2.
The new discussions involving SpaceX thus fit into a broader trend in which AI companies are no longer solely investing billions in hardware themselves. Banks and investors are increasingly being called upon to finance the purchase of chips and other AI infrastructure. As a result, the AI race is taking on an increasingly financial character in addition to its technological one.