SpaceX inks $40B AI chip financing deal with Apollo Management

Under the terms of the deal, Apollo will purchase the AI chips and associated server hardware.

It will then lease this equipment to SpaceX over a period of five years from the date of delivery.

The company plans to close this deal by year-end, pending closing conditions, with leases set to begin in H1 2027 as GPUs and related equipment are delivered.

The financing deal provides SpaceX with an alternative way to fund its rapidly growing AI ambitions, without solely relying on traditional debt markets.

SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said in a statement that this lease diversifies its funding sources and meets a significant portion of the capital needed for its growth plans.

He also noted that they are seeing "less than one-year payback periods" on their AI infrastructure investments as they scale compute to power Grok and its cloud services.

Apollo has said that the financing will help deliver NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin chips for SpaceX's "terrestrial compute buildout."

The deal comes as SpaceX increases spending to expand its AI infrastructure, in addition to its Starlink and rocket launch businesses.

The financing follows a blockbuster Q3 for SpaceX's AI business, which includes the Grok chatbot, Cursor coding tool, and cloud compute business.

SpaceX's AI segment outperformed investor expectations in Q3, bringing in $7.6 billion of the company's total revenue of $14.6 billion.

This is more than what Starlink and rocket launches made combined.

Capital expenditures also soared to nearly $20 billion, up from $6.9 billion a year earlier, as SpaceX rushes to expand its compute footprint.

Johnsen said on the company's October 20 earnings call that they expect to spend between $35 billion and $40 billion in Q4 alone.