Apollo and banks in talks to finance SpaceX's $40 billion Nvidia GPU purchase

Apollo Capital Management and several banks are in discussions with SpaceX to help facilitate the company's purchase of $40 billion worth of Nvidia graphics processing units, according to a person familiar with the talks who asked not to be named. The Financial Times was first to report on the financing talks. Apollo declined to comment, and Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment, CNBC reported.

The deal will primarily rely on the investment-grade debt market, where companies sell bonds rated as relatively low risk, the person said. SpaceX last tapped that market four months ago. Two weeks after its record-breaking IPO in mid-June 2026, the space exploration company raised $25 billion in bonds at different durations. CNBC reported at the time that the bond sale saw high demand from fixed-income investors, meaning investors who buy bonds.

SpaceX's $40 billion debt deal will likely use the GPUs as collateral, and Apollo is said to be playing a leading role in facilitating the financing, the person said. Since the June bond sale, AI-related bonds have sold off and credit spreads — the extra yield investors demand to hold corporate bonds instead of safer assets — have widened, according to CNBC.

The market is still operating under the expectation that GPUs hold their value for about seven years, according to a person in the credit industry who asked not to be named. Computing power is scarce and the shortage is not expected to abate anytime soon, which supports the value of high-performing GPUs, that person said.

The financing talks follow a series of bond issuances from Meta, Amazon and Google as the cost of funding the AI buildout gets more expensive, CNBC reported. The two sources told CNBC that more debt sales are expected and that fixed-income investors are demanding a higher yield to service the debt, a sign that participants are becoming more selective about their AI exposure.