According to unconfirmed reports, SpaceX is pursuing a fundraising round of approximately USD 40 billion, with proceeds earmarked for the procurement of Nvidia AI chips as the company expands its footprint in artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centre operations under Elon Musk's direction.
Apollo Global Management is understood to be at the front of the queue to arrange the deal's funding, according to available reporting. Roughly USD 10 billion of that financing would come through bank lending, with a further USD 30 billion sourced from investment-grade debt instruments. Distributing the debt load across a broader pool of investors was a role Apollo stood ready to take on, alongside coordinating the financing arrangements.
Pimco has been named among the lenders understood to be taking part in those negotiations. Completion of the transaction is anticipated sometime during 2027.
The transaction's scale points to how rapidly expenditure on AI infrastructure has been climbing, though analysts differ on the pace and trajectory of that trend. Developing large-scale AI infrastructure places considerable demand on processing capacity. Procuring next-generation chips, constructing data centres, and putting the necessary supporting infrastructure in place all carry price tags that run into the hundreds of billions.
Projections from Morgan Stanley place the external financing requirement for AI-related infrastructure at roughly USD 1.5 trillion by the time 2028 arrives.
Nvidia hardware has been identified by SpaceX as the foundation of its artificial intelligence strategy. Pointing to Nvidia's Vera Rubin architecture as the hardware foundation of choice, Musk indicated that construction plans would draw exclusively from Nvidia's technology lineup, though no independent confirmation of that commitment was immediately available. Projections shared by him pointed to the Colossus 2 facility operated by xAI potentially adding enough Nvidia hardware before year's end to push its total chip count past twice the current figure.
The debt-raising effort follows SpaceX's attainment of an investment-grade credit rating, itself coming on the heels of an USD 86 billion public listing completed in June. Debt accumulation and the pace of capital expenditure have drawn scrutiny from a portion of the investment community. Investor demand for SpaceX debt weakened in the wake of a preceding bond issuance.
Such an arrangement would draw SpaceX and Nvidia into closer alignment at a point when appetite for AI-driven computing infrastructure continues to expand. On a separate track, Nvidia has been building financing platforms alongside a group of prominent investment firms — Apollo, BlackRock, and KKR among them — with a collective target of drawing in upwards of USD 500 billion to fund AI infrastructure development across global markets.
Debt-backed chip procurement has become a defining feature of the current AI buildout, and SpaceX's financing approach reflects how broadly that pattern has taken hold across the technology sector.
