Elon Musk says SpaceX has closed $40 billion in debt financing for graphics processors, securing money for Nvidia chips as lenders become more cautious about the AI construction rush. The announcement moves the company beyond the fundraising talks reported earlier this month.

Musk said SpaceX's investment-grade credit standing and income from Starlink and rocket launches helped it get the financing. He also warned that companies relying on AI data centers alone were finding it much harder to borrow, predicting a wave of failures and mergers among specialized cloud providers.

Musk says the financing has closed

In an October 25 post on X, Musk wrote:

"SpaceX closed $40B of debt for GPUs, but we’re investment grade and have Starlink & launch revenue."

GPUs, or graphics processing units, provide the computing power used to train and run AI models. Reuters had reported on October 6 that SpaceX was discussing a $40 billion financing package with banks and asset managers to buy Nvidia processors.

The Financial Times reported then that the proposed package included about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt, with Apollo expected to lead it and Pimco among lenders in talks. Those were the proposed arrangements at the time. Musk's announcement did not identify the final lenders, interest rates or financing structure.

In a separate reply to investor-news account Sawyer Merritt, Musk said the purchases were for GPUs arriving in the first and second quarters of 2027. He described the financing as primarily callable debt and said it would not be a major factor in the current quarter.

Borrowing has become more expensive

SpaceX was already facing tougher pricing before Musk announced the deal. In an October 22 report, Semafor said the lowest-rated portion was expected to carry an interest rate of about 8.3%, citing people familiar with the transaction.

A safer portion backed by some of SpaceX's chips was expected to price around 7.75%. That was more than a percentage point above where its existing bonds were trading, the report said. Semafor identified Apollo and Goldman Sachs as leading the financing; both declined to comment.

Those figures were indications before completion, rather than confirmed rates for the closed deal. The report also described weaker existing SpaceX bonds and wider default-insurance costs as investors weighed the company's spending plans and debt load.

Musk argued that the financing squeeze was especially severe for businesses without substantial income outside AI data centers. He predicted widespread losses and consolidation among what he described as more than 200 neoclouds. These companies rent specialized computing capacity, often built around large GPU clusters, to AI customers.

In another message visible in the same X discussion, Musk said he expected computing hardware to be stranded in partially completed data centers. His warning concerned projects failing to reach completion even after companies had committed to buying processors.

SpaceX's spending shows the size of the bill

The company's latest financial results show how quickly its computing business has grown. Revenue reached $14.575 billion in the third quarter, up 161% from $5.576 billion a year earlier. Net income was $4.4 billion.

The Super Intelligence segment generated $7.56 billion in revenue, just over half the company's total. Connectivity, which includes Starlink, brought in $5.248 billion, while the Space segment contributed $1.767 billion.

Capital spending was even larger: $19.593 billion for the quarter, compared with $6.88 billion a year earlier. The Super Intelligence segment accounted for $16.444 billion of that spending, as SpaceX continued building its computing infrastructure.

The Super Intelligence segment reported $431 million in operating profit, compared with a $1.722 billion operating loss a year earlier. SpaceX said it had reached 1.7 gigawatts of nameplate computing capacity by September 30. It attributed the segment's growth to cloud services agreements, its acquisition of Cursor and products including Grok Bot.