SpaceX Seeks $40 Billion Apollo-Led Financing to Buy Nvidia Chips for AI Build-Out

What happened

On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, the Financial Times reported that SpaceX is in talks to raise roughly $40 billion in financing led by Apollo Global Management to purchase Nvidia chips for its expanding AI computing operations, and on Wednesday, October 7, Bloomberg confirmed the talks, describing them as at an early stage that could still end without a deal. The package, according to the reports, would combine about $10 billion in bank loans with $30 billion in investment-grade debt that Apollo would lead and sell on to investors including Pacific Investment Management (Pimco). Neither SpaceX, Apollo nor Nvidia has publicly confirmed the plan, and Reuters could not immediately verify it, a gap Interfax flagged when relaying the report to its readers.

If completed on the timeline FT sources describe, with the deal expected to close in 2027, the financing would rank among the largest yet tied to the AI build-out, a framing Bloomberg also uses. The chips in question are destined for SpaceX's Colossus 2 cluster in the Memphis area. Elon Musk said in September that the cluster currently holds 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300s, and that the chip count may more than double by year-end, with 220,000 additional GB300s due the following week. SpaceX is not only building with the hardware but renting it out: Google agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for access to about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs. TNW framed the raise as a debt-funded shopping trip for Nvidia silicon, noting that the sum would make SpaceX one of the largest single buyers in the AI hardware market if the talks hold.

Why it matters

The scale of the raise underlines how far AI infrastructure spending has moved onto corporate balance sheets and how much of it is being funded by debt rather than cash. Tech companies are borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars for AI data centers, and the reported SpaceX package, at $40 billion, would sit among the largest single deals in that wave. It is also part of a financing architecture Nvidia itself helped assemble: in August, Nvidia set up financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to raise more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure, the same month Musk said SpaceX would build its AI data centers using only Nvidia hardware.

The deal tightens a web of relationships in the AI economy. Nvidia sells chips to a buyer whose purchase is financed through a platform Nvidia co-created, and a portion of the resulting computing capacity is then rented to Google for $920 million a month. A similar dynamic appears elsewhere in the market: Broadcom was separately reported to be providing AI startup Anthropic with loans of up to $42 billion for infrastructure spending. Credit markets, in other words, are now a load-bearing part of the AI build-out, and Apollo's role as lead arranger shows private credit moving to the center of it. For bond investors such as Pimco, the deal would offer investment-grade exposure to a sector whose cash flows depend on AI demand holding up; for equity markets, the after-hours moves on Tuesday, with SpaceX shares down about 1% and Nvidia up about 0.5%, suggest investors saw the news as roughly neutral on the day.

How it is being covered

The story is being carried widely, with 62 outlets tracking it, though the split is uneven: ground.news figures show 62 percent of rated coverage is from Right-leaning outlets, 28 percent from the center and 10 percent from Left-leaning ones, which marks a blindspot on the Left. Of the 29 outlets whose factuality was rated, 22 sit at high or very high, so the reporting rests largely on strong-reputation sources. Coverage on the Right and in the center has focused on the financing structure and Apollo's lead role, while several Left-leaning outlets have not yet picked the story up in force.

What to watch

Three things will settle the story's direction. First, confirmation or denial from SpaceX, Apollo or Nvidia, none of which has commented publicly, and any statement would move the story from sourced reporting to confirmed deal terms. Second, the two outlets' divergent timelines: FT sources put completion in 2027, while Bloomberg flags an early stage with no guarantee of a deal, so a breakdown, downsizing or restructuring of the talks remains possible and would itself be market-moving news. Third, the terms when they emerge: the split between the $10 billion bank loan component and the $30 billion investment-grade bond component, the pricing, and which investors beyond Pimco take the paper will show how expensive it has become for even the largest AI buyers to borrow at this scale.

Beyond the deal itself, watch the broader credit picture. The August Nvidia financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, sized at more than $500 billion, and the reported Broadcom loans of up to $42 billion to Anthropic point to a market where chip purchases and data center construction are increasingly financed rather than paid for from cash. Market reaction to the underlying trend is also worth tracking: SpaceX shares fell about 1% in after-hours trading on Tuesday while Nvidia rose about 0.5%, and further moves will show how investors weigh debt-funded chip purchases against the revenue those chips are meant to generate, including the Google rental contract.

By the numbers

Source snapshot