SpaceX Seeks $40 Billion, Led by Apollo, to Buy Nvidia AI Chips

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking to raise $40 billion to buy artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia, Bloomberg reported on October 6, citing the Financial Times.

The company is pursuing about $10 billion in bank loans and a $30 billion investment-grade bond sale to finance the purchases, the report said.

Apollo Global Management is set to lead the fundraising. It will also help sell the bonds to investors, and the deal is expected to be completed in 2027.

Demand for large-scale financing is rising rapidly as AI companies expand their computing infrastructure. Big Tech companies and AI model developers are investing hundreds of billions of dollars to build or lease data centers equipped with the chips that power AI systems. That is pushing up costs not only for semiconductors, but also for land and power equipment.

Musk said last month that xAI could more than double the number of Nvidia chips in its Colossus 2 AI computing cluster by the end of the year.

Colossus 2 currently has 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300 chips installed. Another 220,000 GB300 chips are due to come online, with an additional 220,000 expected in November, Musk said. If everything goes according to plan, another 220,000 could be activated by the end of December.

Apollo also participated in Nvidia’s $500 billion financing partnership launched in August to build AI infrastructure. Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR were also part of the partnership.

After the FT report, SpaceX shares gave up earlier gains and at one point fell 1.8% in after-hours trading in New York. Nvidia shares rose as much as 0.6%.