SpaceX confirms a $40 billion GPU financing with Apollo as Musk says credit has shut for most AI firms

SpaceX put its $40 billion chip financing in writing on Monday, a day after Elon Musk announced the number in a post on X.

The company said it has a binding commitment for a master finance lease of about $40 billion covering GPUs and related equipment, with an entity managed by Apollo Global Management. SpaceX called it the largest GPU financing ever arranged. The hardware is Nvidia's next generation Vera Rubin chips, bound for the company's ground based computing buildout, including the Colossus site in Memphis. Goldman Sachs served as sole structuring agent, and BlackRock, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and accounts advised by KKR made anchor commitments. The commitment letter is dated October 24, according to the company's regulatory filing on Monday. The lease is expected to close before the end of 2026, with schedules starting in the first half of 2027 as the chips arrive. Each schedule runs about five to five and a half years, with quarterly payments made in advance.

Musk explained on Sunday why SpaceX could raise the money when others cannot. "As of the past few weeks, debt markets have almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn't have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers," he wrote. "SpaceX closed $40B of debt for GPUs, but we're investment grade and have Starlink & launch revenue." He predicted that the more than 200 neocloud companies that rent out AI computing power face what he called guppy level death and consolidation.

The market tested that prediction on Monday morning. CoreWeave and Nebius, two of the largest neocloud firms, fell 5.4 percent and 3.9 percent after Musk's post, and IREN and Applied Digital each dropped more than 3 percent, Reuters reported. CoreWeave and Nebius have each lost more than 30 percent of their market value in October, as of October 26, as lenders and investors question debt funded AI spending.

SpaceX can point to operating revenue that most AI borrowers do not have. Its revenue climbed 161 percent in the third quarter to $14.58 billion from a year earlier, and revenue for the first nine months of 2026 nearly doubled to $27.08 billion on Starlink subscriptions and launch work. Capital spending nearly tripled to $19.6 billion in the quarter. The company swung to a $4.4 billion profit in the third quarter, its first as a public company, after a loss of $413 million across the first nine months taken together. Its debt stood at $38.8 billion at the end of September, before this lease, including $25 billion in senior unsecured notes sold in June that mature between 2031 and 2056.

The financing lands while SpaceX and Tesla weigh a merger, a comparison Reuters laid out on Monday. Tesla earned $4.3 billion in the first nine months of 2026 on revenue of $78.67 billion, and its market value stands near $2.16 trillion. The two companies already share the Terafab chip venture in Austin, which expects to produce its first test chip around May or June of next year.