Elon Musk’s SpaceX agrees to $40B Apollo-managed lease for Nvidia AI chips due in 2027

SpaceX has secured a $40 billion commitment for AI equipment. Elon Musk’s company said it reached a binding agreement to enter a financing lease with an Apollo Global Management-managed entity for Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips and related hardware. The equipment will support SpaceX’s expansion of computing infrastructure on Earth, including capacity for its Grok AI services and cloud customers.In a blog post, the company noted that the transaction is expected to close before the end of 2026; however, it is subject to specified conditions.

Equipment deliveries and the start of individual leases are expected in the first half of 2027, meaning the commitment will support next year’s expansion.Under the arrangement, the Apollo-managed entity will purchase graphics processing units, or GPUs, and server equipment before leasing them to SpaceX. GPUs are chips used to train and run AI models. The deal involves approximately $40 billion in total payments, with each equipment lease running for slightly more than five years from delivery.What SpaceX will use the Nvidia chips forThe additional hardware will power Grok for businesses and consumers while serving existing and future customers that rent computing capacity from SpaceX.

In its announcement, the company said the financing would diversify its funding sources and cover much of the investment needed for its growth plans. Its finance chief said demand was strong enough that some Super Intelligence infrastructure investments were recovering their cost in less than a year. That is the company’s assessment of current returns, rather than a guarantee for the new equipment.“SpaceX aims to deploy the largest compute infrastructure in the world,” the company said in its announcement.Which financial firms are backing the transactionApollo and Goldman Sachs led the financing commitments, with Goldman Sachs serving as the sole structuring agent responsible for arranging the transaction’s financial structure.Funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, alongside capital accounts advised by KKR, also made anchor commitments.

These are substantial commitments that help establish the financing package.The agreement remains subject to closing conditions. Individual lease schedules will begin as shipments arrive, rather than all equipment entering service at once.Recently, Musk said on X that SpaceX had “closed” $40 billion in GPU debt financing. However, the company later said it expected the lease transaction to close before year-end.

He said the funding mainly covered chips arriving in the first and second quarters of 2027 and would not be “a major factor this quarter.”SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said separately that the company still expects fourth-quarter capital expenditure of $35 billion to $40 billion. That spending forecast covers the current quarter, while the newly announced equipment leases are scheduled to begin next year.You use AI every day.

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