By Radarr Africa Business Desk
LAGOS, October 27 (Radarr Africa) – Elon Musk said SpaceX has closed $40 billion in debt financing to buy graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence systems, CNBC reported on Monday.
Musk made the announcement in a post on X on Sunday, according to the report, which was carried by CNBC Africa. He said SpaceX is investment grade and earns revenue from its Starlink internet and rocket launch businesses. In a follow-up post, he said the financing is mainly callable debt for GPUs and is expected to arrive in the first and second quarters of 2027, CNBC said.
The deal follows earlier reporting on SpaceX’s plans. The Financial Times reported on October 6, according to the investingLive website, that SpaceX was seeking about $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips, with Apollo Global Management expected to lead the financing. It said the package comprised about $10 billion in bank loans and about $30 billion in investment-grade debt, that Pimco was among lenders in talks, and that the deal was expected to close in 2027. The chips were intended for SpaceX’s AI computing operations, including Grok and the Colossus data centres, investingLive said, citing the FT. SpaceX, Apollo and Nvidia did not immediately respond to requests for comment at the time, and Pimco declined to comment, it added, citing Reuters.
CNBC said Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, had reported that SpaceX was seeking $40 billion from banks and investors to buy Nvidia chips. The proposed structure used a special purpose vehicle to keep the debt off SpaceX’s balance sheet and protect its investment-grade rating, CNBC said, citing the Bloomberg report. Goldman Sachs was reportedly leading investor talks, including with Apollo, it added. CNBC noted that market turmoil had complicated the talks.
SpaceX’s AI unit, which the company calls Super Intelligence, is now its largest business unit, CNBC reported. Its third-quarter revenue rose ninefold to $7.56 billion from $813 million a year earlier, according to the company’s latest earnings release as cited by CNBC.
InvestingLive reported that SpaceX shares fell about 1 per cent and Nvidia shares rose about 0.5 per cent in extended trading after the FT report in early October. Let’s Data Science, which also summarised the FT account, said no final lender commitments, pricing or chip count had been reported at that stage and that the report described a financing effort rather than a completed transaction.
The Financial Times report is behind a paywall, and investingLive’s summary linked to a Reuters report on it. Nvidia is named as the chip supplier in the early-October reports cited here, and the investingLive summary did not give a pricing or tenor for the debt.
Musk also said that debt markets have largely cut off financing for companies without substantial revenue outside AI data centres, CNBC reported. He predicted that more than 200 “neocloud” companies, which build cloud infrastructure for AI and machine-learning workloads, would face widespread failures and consolidation, with only a few surviving.
The scale of AI spending has drawn attention from banks. InvestingLive reported that Morgan Stanley has estimated AI infrastructure will need $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028. The website said SpaceX’s initial public offering in June raised around $86 billion and was described as a record.
