Space Exploration Technologies signs binding commitment letter for lease with Apollo-managed entity

Equipment is due for delivery from the first half of 2027, with each tranche leased for about five to 5.25 years.

Space Exploration Technologies has signed a binding commitment letter for a master finance lease with an entity managed by Apollo Global Management. Under the lease, the lessor will acquire graphics processing unit pods and related equipment and lease them to the company for use at selected data centers. The lease is subject to closing conditions and is expected to close before year end.

The company expects aggregate principal payments under the lease schedules to total about $40 billion. The equipment will arrive in tranches, each leased for about five to 5.25 years. Lease schedules start in the first half of 2027, when the equipment is delivered, so the near-term build-out of computing capacity depends on deliveries arriving on that timeline.

Musk has confirmed the Apollo-led financing as closed debt. The lease gives the $40 billion commitment a legal form and a delivery timeline, rather than leaving it as a headline figure.

The structure is a master finance lease, not direct debt or equity. In this case, that keeps the pods and their liabilities off SpaceX's core balance sheet while Apollo owns the equipment. The same financing pattern was flagged in early October, when the facility first surfaced. The lease terms also tie SpaceX's AI infrastructure costs to the depreciation cycle of Nvidia's hardware. That means the company is committing to refresh or renew this GPU capacity on a fixed schedule into the early 2030s.