SpaceX has signed a binding commitment for roughly $40 billion in financing for AI chips and related data-center hardware. An entity managed by Apollo Global Management will purchase the equipment and lease it to SpaceX, giving the company an alternative to funding the entire expansion through cash or conventional debt.
Each lease will run for about five to five-and-a-quarter years after its equipment is delivered. SpaceX expects the transaction to close by the end of 2026, subject to conditions, with leases beginning in the first half of 2027. Apollo says the package will help supply Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin systems for terrestrial computing.
The hardware is intended to support Grok and SpaceX’s cloud services. The company says its AI segment generated $7.6 billion of its $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, while capital spending rose to nearly $20 billion from $6.9 billion a year earlier. Management expects another $35 billion to $40 billion of spending in the fourth quarter.
Those figures explain both the scale and the structure of the deal: leasing spreads hardware costs over years while chips begin producing revenue. It also creates a long payment obligation around equipment that can age quickly. Closing conditions, delivery timing and the actual returns from deployed GPUs remain the practical variables behind the headline commitment.