SpaceX Says It Closed $40 Billion in Debt for Future GPUs

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX has closed $40 billion in debt financing for graphics processing units (GPUs), which are expected to be delivered in the first half of 2027. Musk made the statement on X, replying to a post by investor Chamath Palihapitiya.

Palihapitiya had warned that tightening financing and delays in data center construction could leave AI compute capacity sitting idle next year. Musk agreed with the assessment but argued that SpaceX is better placed than many rivals. In his reply, he attributed that advantage to the company's ability to borrow against revenue from its non-AI businesses.

Musk's argument: non-AI revenue sets SpaceX apart

According to Musk, debt markets have for the past few weeks been almost entirely shut to companies that lack significant revenue independent of AI data centers. SpaceX, he said, holds an investment-grade credit rating and earns income from Starlink satellite internet and launch services, which keeps it outside that squeeze.

Musk also commented on what this means for the more than 200 neocloud companies. He wrote that most of them will go through a heavy round of attrition and consolidation, that some will survive, but that there won't be many. In his own words, it will be "guppy-level death" and consolidation.

Details of the financing remain murky

It is not clear exactly what Musk meant by "closed." Nor has it been disclosed whether investors have agreed on final pricing for the debt. Musk said the borrowing is callable debt that will be used mainly to buy GPUs, and that the chips will arrive in the first and second quarters of 2027. He added that the specific quarter does not matter much.

Earlier this month it emerged that SpaceX had proposed a $40 billion debt package for Nvidia hardware. The proposed financing was estimated to cover roughly 360,000 Rubin GPUs across 5,000 Nvidia NVL72 racks. The package was reported to consist of a $10 billion bank loan and $30 billion of investment-grade debt. Musk said the financing has closed but did not confirm which GPU models or how many units the deal covers.

Spending is rising, and infrastructure is also for sale

SpaceX faces another heavy spending period. On the company's third-quarter 2026 earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said he expects $35 billion to $40 billion in capital expenditure in the fourth quarter, driven by additional capacity coming online in that quarter.

The move is part of Musk's broader push to expand AI compute. In August, xAI laid out plans to grow data center capacity sevenfold to 10 gigawatts by 2027. In September it was reported that SpaceXAI planned to add another 660,000 Nvidia GPUs during 2026, which, if carried out, could bring the total to roughly 1.44 million GPUs. The GPUs are only part of the cost: power, cooling, networking equipment and physical infrastructure are all needed to make those accelerators useful.

SpaceX has also begun selling access to its own infrastructure. In May, Anthropic gained access to the Colossus 1 supercomputer, which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs and over 300 megawatts of compute capacity. In June came a separate deal with Google, which agreed to pay $920 million a month to use roughly 110,000 Nvidia GPUs and related hardware. Payments are planned to run from October 2026 through June 2029.