SpaceX has closed $40 billion of debt to buy GPUs, in a deal with private-equity firm Apollo Global Management under which an Apollo affiliate will buy AI chips and server hardware and lease them to SpaceX, with total principal payments of about $40 billion. SpaceX filed a notice with the SEC on Monday, October 26; Elon Musk had posted on Sunday that 'SpaceX closed $40 billion of debt for GPUs, but we're investment grade and have Starlink and launch revenue.' The deal follows a $25 billion bond offering in June.

Musk used the announcement to warn about everyone else's financing: debt markets have 'almost entirely shut off access to money for any company that doesn't have substantial revenue independent of AI data centers' in the past few weeks, he said, predicting 'guppy-level death and consolidation' among the 200-plus neocloud AI compute companies, with only some making it through.

The timing is not a coincidence: the same morning, Anthropic's public S-1 showed it has committed to pay SpaceX up to $120.5 billion through 2029 for AI data-center capacity, roughly 10 percent of SpaceX's Wall Street-projected revenue through 2029 by Barron's estimate. SpaceX stock was up 1.4 percent in midday trading at $149.62. SpaceX did not disclose the rate on the new debt and did not respond to a request for comment on terms.