Elon Musk says lenders have all but stopped funding companies whose business is mostly AI data centers, and that SpaceX got its $40 billion GPU financing done anyway. “As of the past few weeks, debt markets have almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn’t have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers,” Musk wrote on X Sunday afternoon, replying to investor Chamath Palihapitiya. SpaceX, he added, “closed $40B of debt for GPUs, but we’re investment grade and have Starlink & launch.”
Under 40 minutes later, he described the money as “primarily callable debt for GPU purchases that will arrive in Q1 and Q2,” with a short addendum: “Not a major factor this quarter.” Reuters reported the closing on the strength of those posts. Neither post named the lenders or gave an interest rate.
The price went up on the way to closing
The raise surfaced Oct. 6, when the Financial Times and Reuters reported that SpaceX wanted roughly $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade debt to buy Nvidia chips, a plan WebProNews covered at the time. A person familiar with the talks told CNBC the debt would likely use the GPUs as collateral, with Apollo playing a leading role.
On Thursday, Semafor reported that the lowest-rated portion was expected to carry interest of about 8.3% and a chip-backed portion about 7.75%, more than a percentage point above where SpaceX’s existing bonds trade, which Semafor tied to an AI-loan market that had pulled back sharply in recent weeks. A day later Bloomberg reported, in a story summarized by Investing.com, that the deal had run into obstacles as credit markets swung. Bloomberg described a proposed structure of three privately placed tranches, the largest a subordinated piece estimated at $25 billion to $30 billion, run through a special purpose vehicle so SpaceX could keep the borrowing off its balance sheet and protect its investment-grade ratings. Goldman Sachs was leading talks with an investor group headed by Apollo.
Who Musk thinks is left out
The comment landed in a running X thread about stranded compute. Late Saturday, Musk had written, “I think we’re going to see a lot of stranded compute in partially complete data centers.” Palihapitiya, who described himself as holding a portfolio of energized land assets, answered Sunday that “Neoclouds are disorganized and poorly capitalized” and predicted 2027 “will clear out a bunch of wrong/bad bets.” The pressure on those companies was already visible in bond prices. Yields on CoreWeave’s notes climbed to around 15% earlier this month, as WebProNews reported, above the level that typically signals distress.
SpaceX’s numbers show why lenders treat it differently. Revenue rose 161% from a year earlier to $14.58 billion in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while capital spending nearly tripled to $19.6 billion. Its IPO filing listed “manufacturing our own GPUs” among the substantial capital expenditures it is taking on, and Terafab, its chipmaking joint venture with Tesla in Austin, should produce a first test chip around May or June of next year, according to Reuters.
The final cost of the $40 billion is still unknown. Semafor had reported that the chip-backed piece was likely to price “next week” near 7.75%, and that the figures could change before the debt was finalized.