SpaceX Reportedly Seeks $40 Billion in Apollo-Led Financing to Buy Nvidia Chips, FT Says

SpaceX is reportedly seeking to raise $40 billion in a financing effort led by Apollo Global Management to buy Nvidia chips, according to the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the matter. Channel NewsAsia and KSL News both carried the FT report on Tuesday, October 6.

The structure, per FT: roughly $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt. Apollo is expected to lead the deal and help sell the debt to investors, with bond giant PIMCO among the firms in talks to help finance it, FT reported. The transaction is expected to close in 2027.

SpaceX, Apollo, Nvidia and PIMCO did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment, according to Channel NewsAsia and KSL News. Ground News noted that Reuters "could not immediately verify the report." This is FT sourcing through unnamed people familiar with the matter, not a confirmed filing or company statement.

Why SpaceX needs this much cash

Elon Musk's company has been on an AI infrastructure spending spree. SpaceX's AI-related non-cancelable commitments stood at $28 billion as of June 2026, with much of it due in 2027, according to Crypto Briefing. In the second quarter of 2026 alone, SpaceX spent $15.8 billion in capex on compute infrastructure.

SpaceX went public in an $86 billion IPO that carried nearly 78% of global venture-backed listing proceeds in the first half of 2026, so a $30 billion investment-grade bond sale would layer public debt markets on top of a company that is now also a public equity issuer, rather than marking a company's first-ever brush with outside capital markets. BigGo Finance's framing of this as a company historically raising capital mainly through private rounds is out of step with where SpaceX's financing now actually stands.

Apollo isn't new to this corner of the market. The firm already financed Nvidia GPU clusters leased to xAI, the AI venture that merged with X Corp (Twitter) in 2025 to form xAI Holdings, through a $3.5 billion deal in early 2026 and a $3.4 billion deal shortly after, both run through Valor Equity Partners, per Crypto Briefing.

Nvidia is on both sides of the table

Nvidia isn't just the chip seller here. The company held a stake in SpaceX worth about $21 billion as of June 2026, consisting of 122.8 million shares, according to Crypto Briefing. Nvidia is also working with Apollo to build financing consortia for AI infrastructure deals that could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

When a chipmaker holds equity in the buyer, helps arrange the buyer's financing, and sells the hardware the financing is meant to purchase, the money is moving in a tight loop. A Ground News aggregation flagged this directly, warning that SpaceX's potential $40 billion financing "could significantly boost AI infrastructure, but reliance on large tenants poses revenue concentration risks."

The counterargument is straightforward: demand for Nvidia chips is real and well documented, not manufactured. SpaceX is reportedly positioning to rent out compute it doesn't need to outside customers, and those leases are big. Crypto Briefing reports third-party compute leases could generate roughly $40 billion or more in annual recurring revenue, with leases to Anthropic alone valued at around $1.25 billion per month. If that revenue materializes, the debt load looks far less alarming.

What's unresolved

The FT's reporting gives specific numbers, an investment-grade bond structure, and a named lead arranger in Apollo. That's a lot more detail than the vague X post that first floated a $40 billion figure, which Crypto Briefing noted carried "no confirmed terms, timeline or lender roster."

Still, this is sourced to unnamed people, not a signed term sheet or an SEC filing. SpaceX, Apollo, Nvidia and PIMCO have all stayed silent so far. If the deal closes as reported in 2027, it would reportedly rank among the largest bond issuances ever tied to a company of this kind, per BigGo Finance. Until SpaceX or Apollo confirm the terms on the record, the actual size, structure, and timeline of this financing remain exactly what FT's sourcing says they are: reported, not finalized.