Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has agreed to lease roughly $40 billion of graphics processors and related equipment from an entity managed by Apollo Global Management Inc., in what the company and Apollo described as the largest committed GPU financing to date.
SpaceX signed a binding commitment letter on Oct. 24 to enter into a master finance lease under which the lessor will buy GPU pods and related equipment and lease them to SpaceX for use at data centers the company selects, according to a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. SpaceX expects aggregate principal payments under the lease schedules to total about $40 billion.
How the lease works
The equipment will be delivered in tranches, each with its own lease schedule running about five to five and a quarter years. Rent is due quarterly in advance and generally consists of one-twentieth of the financed cost of each tranche plus interest at a fixed annual rate on the outstanding balance, along with certain ongoing costs. The fixed rate will be set at pricing, before SpaceX signs the master lease, the filing said.
The lease will finance Nvidia Vera Rubin chips for the company’s ground-based computing buildout, Apollo said. Apollo and Goldman Sachs led the group of financing parties, with Goldman acting as sole structuring agent. Funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and capital accounts advised by KKR, made anchor commitments.
Conditions and timing
Entry into the master lease remains subject to specified closing conditions and is expected before the end of 2026. The lease schedules are expected to begin in the first half of 2027 as the GPUs are delivered. The filing describes a binding commitment with pricing still to come, not a completed financing.
Why it matters
A finance lease lets SpaceX add a large block of computing capacity while spreading the cost over roughly five years, rather than paying for the chips upfront. In the announcement, SpaceX’s chief financial officer said the company is seeing payback periods of less than a year on its AI infrastructure spending and that the lease diversifies its funding sources while covering a notable portion of the money needed for its growth plans.
The arrangement arrived the same day that four lenders unveiled a separate $63 billion vehicle to finance Broadcom chips for Anthropic, a sign that private credit firms and banks are competing to fund AI hardware through lease and special purpose structures. Starbase, Texas-based SpaceX trades on Nasdaq under the symbol SPCX.
Investors will get more detail once the fixed rate is set and the master lease is signed, including the effective cost of the financing relative to SpaceX’s other borrowings.
