SpaceX secures about $40 billion to lease AI chips from Apollo

In short: SpaceX says it has a binding commitment for about $40 billion to pay for AI chips and related data center equipment, through a leasing deal managed by Apollo.

What happened

SpaceX disclosed in a regulatory filing that it has a binding commitment for roughly $40 billion in financing tied to AI hardware. SpaceX described it as the “largest committed GPU financing” in a statement.

The deal is structured like leasing a car instead of buying it outright. An entity managed by Apollo Global Management will buy the chips and related server hardware, then lease that equipment to SpaceX.

The leases are expected to last about five to five and a quarter years. They start when each batch of equipment is delivered. SpaceX expects the deal to close by the end of the year, and it expects leases to begin in the first half of 2027 as the hardware arrives.

This money is aimed at GPUs, which are specialized computer chips often used to run and train AI systems (you can think of them as high powered engines for processing lots of data quickly). Apollo said the financing will help deliver Nvidia’s next generation Vera Rubin chips for SpaceX’s “terrestrial compute buildout,” meaning more computing capacity on the ground.

Why it matters

AI tools require large amounts of computing power, and that power is expensive. A deal of this size suggests SpaceX plans to keep spending heavily on AI, and it also shows how major finance firms are getting involved by owning the hardware and renting it out.

Source: TechCrunch AI