SpaceX Closes $40bn Financing to Buy AI Chips

Illustration: Fox Bulletin

SpaceX GPU financing has reached a size normally associated with governments. Elon Musk said on X on Sunday 25 October that the company had closed the deal, and a regulatory filing the following day described a binding commitment for roughly $40bn of GPU financing with an entity managed by Apollo.

In a follow-up post Musk said the arrangement “primarily consisted of callable debt for graphics processing units”. The chips are expected to arrive in the first and second quarters of 2027.

Why a rocket company needs GPU financing

Because SpaceX is no longer mainly a rocket company by revenue. Its AI business, which the company calls Super Intelligence, is now its largest unit. Third-quarter revenue there came in at $7.56bn, up roughly ninefold from $813m a year earlier, which puts it ahead of Starlink and the launch business together.

A SpaceX vehicle on the launch pad at sunset — Image: SpaceX

Musk’s stated reason for being able to borrow at this scale is that SpaceX is investment grade and has revenue from Starlink and rocket launches that does not depend on AI demand. That is the pitch, and it doubles as a description of who cannot borrow right now.

The scale of that growth is the part worth pausing on. A unit going from $813m to $7.56bn in four quarters is not a division being expanded, it is a different company growing inside the old one, and the chips are what it runs on.

The warning attached to the deal

Musk did not present the financing as a sign of easy conditions. In remarks paraphrased by CNBC he said debt markets have largely shut off funding for companies without substantial revenue outside AI data centres, and predicted that the more than 200 so-called neocloud providers face widespread failure and consolidation.

Read alongside the deal, that is a fairly pointed argument: the capital is available, but only to borrowers whose existing business can service it if the AI build disappoints. Microsoft raising $25bn in bonds the same week, against $115bn of orders, fits the same pattern.

What is settled and what is not

The filing is the firmest part. A binding commitment with a named counterparty for a stated amount is a document rather than a statement, and it is the reason this story carries weight that a post on X would not.

Reporting has been less settled on the terms. Earlier coverage described a proposal split between bank loans and investment-grade debt at indicative rates, and separate reporting said pricing discussions were continuing even after Musk announced the close. The borrowing entity, the repayment schedule and any guarantees have not been laid out publicly.

Why 2027 is the number that matters

Delivery in the first half of 2027 means the hardware arrives into a market that will look nothing like today’s. By then Amazon intends to be selling its own chips to outside buyers, and several alternatives to Nvidia will have reached general availability. A deal struck now is a bet that demand for capacity outruns all of it.

For background on the hardware itself, CNBC reported the filing and the segment figures behind it.

Written by Marcus Feltz

Marcus Feltz handles sport and gaming at Fox Bulletin, writing the record-book rankings and the working code lists that Roblox players rely on. Every codes page is rebuilt from each game's own channels on each pass, and a code that stops redeeming is moved down to the expired list the same day.

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