SpaceX commits to about $40bn GPU lease financing led by Apollo and Goldman Sachs

SpaceX has made a binding commitment to enter a master finance lease of about $40bn with an entity managed by Apollo Global Management, Apollo said on 26 October. The lease covers Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips and related equipment for SpaceX's ground-based computing build-out. The deal has not closed: it is subject to closing conditions and is expected to complete before the end of 2026. Apollo describes it as the largest committed GPU financing.

Under the structure, the Apollo entity buys the chips and server hardware and leases them to SpaceX. TechCrunch, citing SpaceX's regulatory filing, reported that each lease runs about five to five and a quarter years from delivery of a batch. Apollo says deliveries, and with them the lease schedules, are expected to start in the first half of 2027. Apollo and Goldman Sachs led the financing group, with Goldman Sachs as sole structuring agent. BlackRock funds and accounts, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and KKR-advised capital accounts made anchor commitments.

Chief financial officer Bret Johnsen said the lease "diversifies our funding sources" and pointed to "less than one-year payback periods" on the infrastructure, TechCrunch reported. The financing supports heavy spending: TechCrunch put SpaceX's capital expenditure at nearly $20bn, against $6.9bn a year earlier, with $35bn to $40bn guided for the fourth quarter. AI activities produced $7.6bn of the company's $14.6bn third-quarter revenue.