SpaceX is in talks to borrow $40 billion to buy AI chips from Nvidia, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, according to Reuters, and Bloomberg said the deal would rank among the biggest debt financings yet for the AI buildout. None of the companies has confirmed the plan. SpaceX, Apollo and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Pimco declined to comment, Reuters reported.
According to the FT, the package would combine about $10 billion in bank loans with $30 billion in investment-grade debt. Apollo Global Management is expected to lead the deal and help place the debt with a broad range of investors, and bond fund Pimco is among a small group of lenders in talks to provide financing. The FT said the transaction is expected to close in 2027. Bloomberg, citing its own sources, said the talks are at an early stage and could end without a deal.
The chips would feed the AI computing buildout SpaceX took on when it merged with xAI in February. Musk said last month that Colossus 2, the Memphis-area cluster built by xAI, may more than double its Nvidia chip count by the end of the year, and he has said the company will use Nvidia hardware exclusively for its data centers. In a post on X, he put Colossus 2 at 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300s, Bloomberg reported.
SpaceX also rents that capacity out. Google agreed in June to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for compute that includes about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, running from October 2026 through June 2029, CNBC reported from a regulatory filing. Anthropic struck a deal in May to use all of SpaceX’s compute capacity at its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis.
The talks follow a run of large chip financings. Wall Street banks began syndicating a record $60 billion Broadcom-Anthropic chip debt package on Monday. Apollo has already struck a $7 billion financing deal with xAI, with the debt earmarked for a special-purpose vehicle to help xAI rent chips for Colossus 2, Bloomberg reported. That kind of chip SPV keeps the hardware in use while the debt sits in a separate entity. In August, Nvidia partnered with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR on financing platforms meant to mobilize more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure.
Morgan Stanley estimates AI infrastructure will require $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028, Reuters noted, even as lenders and investors grow more cautious about funding the expansion. SpaceX shares fell about 1% in extended trading Tuesday after the FT report, while Nvidia rose about 0.5%. Musk took SpaceX public in June in a record $86 billion IPO, according to Reuters.
Sources
- Reuters via Investing.com: SpaceX seeks $40 billion financing led by Apollo to buy Nvidia chips, FT reports (October 6, 2026)
- Bloomberg via Business Standard: SpaceX in talks with investors to borrow $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips (October 7, 2026)
- The Next Web: SpaceX reportedly in talks to borrow $40B to buy Nvidia AI chips (October 7, 2026)
- CNBC: Google to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers (June 5, 2026)