SpaceX Announces Nearly $40 Billion in Equipment Financing for Computing Chips
Key Facts
SpaceX said on October 26 that it had entered into a binding commitment to enter into a major financing lease of about $40 billion for GPU units and related equipment with an entity managed by Apollo Global Management. The financing is earmarked for NVIDIA Vera Rubin chips and ground-based computing equipment, as part of the company’s expansion of the infrastructure needed to provide AI services. The company said the lease “diversifies funding sources and covers a significant portion of its growth plan needs.” The financing had not been completed at the time of the announcement; the lease remains subject to specified closing conditions. SpaceX expects the deal to close before the end of 2026, with lease payments to begin when the GPU units and equipment are delivered in the first half of 2027.
Apollo and Goldman Sachs led the financing parties, with Goldman Sachs acting as exclusive lead arranger. Funds managed by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, along with capital accounts advised by KKR, also provided major financing commitments. The structure gives SpaceX financing tied to computing assets, while the company said its infrastructure investments have a payback period of less than one year. The company wants to provide additional computing capacity quickly to serve Grok and its cloud services customers. The announcement comes as companies’ need for financing data centers and chips grows, alongside warnings about the difficulty some specialized computing providers face in securing funding.
Elon Musk warned that more than 200 companies in AI cloud computing could face “a guppy-level die-off and consolidation.” Musk linked this possibility to the difficulty companies relying on AI data center revenue face in obtaining debt financing. He said debt markets had “pretty much shut off access to capital for any company that doesn’t have significant revenue independent of AI data centers.” The warning reflects a divide between companies able to support their investments with broader revenue sources and infrastructure providers that rely on external financing to expand capacity. Musk’s comments do not mean all companies will go bankrupt; they focus on the possibility that smaller companies will exit the market and the sector will consolidate.
CoreWeave data show a mix of large contractual commitments and substantial financing needs. The company reported that expected remaining revenue reached about $104 billion on June 30, 2026, excluding more than $25 billion in new customer commitments added at the beginning of the third quarter. On the same date, total debt stood at $35.6 billion, and the company had $10 billion in undrawn borrowing capacity. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $5.524 billion, compared with $3.127 billion on December 31, 2025, while total liquidity reached $15.553 billion. These figures put the scale of contractual demand alongside the financing and cash resources supporting the expansion.
CoreWeave’s net interest expense rose 140% year over year in the second quarter of 2026 and 121% in the first half of the year, which the company attributed mainly to increased borrowings and debt obligations. Net cash used in investing totaled $14.9 billion in the first half of 2026, compared with $3.9 billion in the same period of 2025, with the company attributing the increase to higher infrastructure investment. In separate estimates, Gartner projected that cost pressures and a lack of differentiated business models would lead more than 80% of AI cloud computing providers to stop operating independently by 2030. It estimated that AI data center owners would need cumulative revenue of $8.5 trillion through that year to cover capital spending and financing costs and achieve a target return of 12%, while AI-attributed revenue would amount to only $3.6 trillion. The comparison puts the funding and return gap at the heart of the risks facing infrastructure expansion.
The two stocks moved unevenly after the financing announcement in the October 26 session: SpaceX shares initially fell about 2%, then rose 1.9% before ending the session down 0.4%. In the same session, CoreWeave shares closed up 1.8% after sharp moves. Over the following days, CoreWeave shares closed at $60.74 on October 29, compared with $63.93 on October 28. SpaceX shares closed at $143.89 on October 29, compared with $147.49 on October 23. The moves followed SpaceX’s third-quarter results, published on October 20, when it reported earnings of $4.4 billion and revenue of $14.6 billion, up 161% year over year; AI became its largest revenue source in the quarter, while Starlink remained its biggest profit generator.
SpaceX recorded capital spending on property and equipment of $19.6 billion in the third quarter of 2026, compared with $6.7 billion in the third quarter of 2025. The company had forecast fourth-quarter capital spending of between $35 billion and $40 billion. The Associated Press also reported that SpaceX shares rose 7.5% in after-hours trading following the release of its third-quarter results on October 20. The reported spending level and quarterly forecast indicate the scale of resources the company is seeking to direct toward expansion, while the announced lease provides part of the financing for computing equipment. The deal’s path is expected to become clearer once the closing conditions are met before the end of 2026, followed by the start of lease payments as equipment is delivered in the first half of 2027.