SpaceX has disclosed in a regulatory filing a binding commitment for about $40 billion in financing with Apollo Global Management for AI chips and related data center equipment. Apollo will buy the hardware and lease it to SpaceX for about five to 5.25 years, with the deal expected to close by year-end and leases starting in the first half of 2027.
SpaceX has signed a roughly $40 billion GPU and equipment financing lease agreement with Apollo Global Management to procure Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips for its "superintelligent future" compute buildout. Equipment will be delivered in batches with lease terms of about five to 5.25 years per batch, starting in the first half of 2027.
SpaceX CFO Brett Johnson said at an earnings call that the company's superintelligent infrastructure segment has strong growth prospects, compute market demand is strong, payback for newly deployed compute capacity is under one year, and per-watt compute prices are slightly above the upper end of last quarter's $30-50 range. Musk added that superintelligent compute shortage will persist long-term, with payback potentially shortening to six months in 2027.
Musk said at a SpaceX conference call that Terafab, a chip venture jointly owned by SpaceX and Tesla, plans to reach volume production in Q3 2028, producing 1 terawatt of compute annually for AI and robotics. He also disclosed an internal target to produce a SRAM test chip at the Austin base around May or June next year.
At SpaceX's Q3 earnings call, Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss a potential merger. No agreement has been reached yet, and any deal would require shareholder approval. Musk said he personally thinks a merger would be good but recused himself as an interested party. Analysts estimate a probability above 80%.
SpaceX reported $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue, with its AI business (renamed Super Intelligence) contributing $7.5 billion, including Cursor, Grok, and a 1.7 GW neocloud business. The AI business posted $431 million in profit. Capital expenditures were $19.6 billion, and the CFO expects $35-40 billion in new capital investments in the fourth quarter.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has bundled X Premium, Grok, and Cursor into a single subscription called The X Subscription, with five tiers: Free, Plus ($8/month), Premium ($30/month), Super ($100/month), and Ultra ($200/month). AI usage limits scale with tier; the free tier includes only limited chat and agent usage, and the latest Grok models require Premium or above. Existing users can upgrade from their X subscription settings, with the option rolling out gradually.
In a lecture at Stanford's CS146S course, Lee Robinson argued that every new product must include agent capabilities or risk becoming headless data for other agents. He outlined four eras of developer-AI collaboration, envisioned agents moving toward an 'always-on' form, discussed cost-control principles such as thin-client fixed-server architecture, main/sub-agent coordination, prompt caching, and 'deleting products,' and predicted agents will be able to work continuously for weeks or months within the next six to twelve months.
SpaceXAI announced a dedicated email feature for Grok Bot, with addresses ending in @mail.grokbot.com. The email can be used to register services, contact merchants on behalf of users, and schedule appointments. The rollout is gradual, and users can claim an address by requesting it in chat or tagging @bot on X. Earlier, Grok Bot also added capabilities to search and monitor X content and Shopify-related features.
SpaceX is seeking to raise $40 billion through an Apollo Global Management-led financing plan to buy Nvidia chips, including about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade bonds, with Pimco among those in talks. The deal is expected to close in 2027.