SpaceX AI Chip Financing: Goldman and Apollo Market $40B Deal

Goldman Sachs and Apollo Global Management have moved from talks with investors to marketing SpaceX’s roughly $40 billion AI chip financing plan to Wall Street. Some investors were invited to commit as much as $500 million before a broader loan syndication, expected soon. PIMCO is also involved in the bond financing. An Apollo-backed entity will fund about $47.3 billion in Nvidia GPUs and related equipment, including next-generation Rubin chips expected in the first half of 2027. The purchase is to be financed with about $40 billion of debt—including an $8.3 billion senior secured loan and several bond tranches—and roughly $7 billion in lease payments prepaid by SpaceX. SpaceX is expected to lease the equipment for around five years, using an off-balance-sheet structure intended to protect its credit rating. The lease requires SpaceX to keep paying if equipment is damaged or operations are disrupted, but SpaceX does not guarantee the chips’ residual value when the lease ends. Investors therefore face SpaceX credit exposure, fixed-payment obligations and uncertainty over rapidly evolving AI hardware values. The deal highlights private credit’s growing role in funding AI infrastructure, amid concerns that the AI boom faces added pressure after Democrats won the US midterm elections. It has no direct cryptocurrency or token-market component and, by itself, offers no clear trading signal for crypto assets.