Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking to raise US$40 billion (S$51.1 billion) in a financing led by Apollo Global Management to buy Nvidia’s chips, the Financial Times reported, underscoring the insatiable demand among AI developers for more computing power.
The AI and rocket company is seeking to raise about US$10 billion in bank loans and US$30 billion in investment-grade debt to pay for the chips, the Financial Times reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Apollo is expected to lead the deal and help sell the debt to investors, the newspaper said, adding that the transaction is expected to close in 2027.
Tech companies and AI model developers are investing and borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to build and lease giant data centres full of chips to power AI systems.
The worldwide expansion of computing capacity has sent the costs of everything from land to chips and power-generation equipment soaring, touching off a series of massive financing deals.
Nvidia, SpaceX and Apollo did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Times’ report.
SpaceX shares erased gains in postmarket trading following the FT’s report, falling as much as 1.8% in New York. Nvidia’s stock rose as much as 0.6%.
In September, Musk said Colossus 2, an AI computing cluster built by his xAI business, may more than double its current Nvidia chip count by the end of 2026.
It was the most detailed timetable that the trillionaire has given yet for expansion plans for the Memphis-area cluster.
Colossus 2 now has 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300s, Musk said in a post on X.
A further 220,000 GB300s are due to be operational next week, with another 220,000 expected in November, he said.
An additional 220,000 may come online late December “if we get lucky”, he said.
Apollo was among the US investment giants that Nvidia tapped for a high-profile partnership in August to source US$500 billion in financing for AI infrastructure.
The coalition – which also includes Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs Group and KKR & Co. – said at the time that they would “create dedicated pools of capital at significant scale at attractive rates for Nvidia customers”.
Executives indicated that it will focus on debt financing to provide access to compute for Nvidia’s largest customers and signalled that there were already many deals in the works that would qualify towards this commitment. BLOOMBERG
