SpaceX seals $40B GPU lease with Apollo Global Management

The financing arrives as SpaceX's AI segment has become its largest revenue contributor. In the third quarter, that segment — which includes the Grok chatbot, the Cursor coding tool and cloud compute — brought in $7.6 billion of SpaceX's $14.6 billion in revenue, more than Starlink and rocket launches combined. Capital expenditures also surged to nearly $20 billion, up from $6.9 billion a year earlier, and CFO Bret Johnsen said on the Oct. 20 earnings call that SpaceX expects to spend $35 billion to $40 billion in the fourth quarter alone.

The structure — an Apollo-managed entity buying chips and leasing them back — gives SpaceX a funding route that does not rely solely on traditional debt markets, which the company says diversifies its sources for growth plans. It also comes after a tumultuous stretch in debt markets for AI infrastructure players, as investors grow squeamish over runaway capital expenditures and limited profits.

Musk used the announcement to draw a contrast with pure-play AI compute rivals, arguing that debt markets have largely closed the door on companies without major revenue streams outside AI data centers. He predicted the more than 200 neocloud companies built solely to rent out GPUs for AI workloads will see "guppy-level death and consolidation," with some making it through but not many. That view is his own characterization, not a disclosed financial projection.