Space Exploration Technologies Corp. said in a Form 8-K filed on October 26, 2026 that it entered a binding commitment letter on October 24 to enter a master finance lease with an entity managed by Apollo Global Management. The lessor would buy graphics processing unit pods and related equipment and lease them to SpaceX.

What the filing says

  • Status: a binding commitment letter to enter the lease. The master lease itself is not yet signed or closed.
  • Equipment: GPU pods and related equipment, for use at data centers that SpaceX selects.
  • Delivery: in tranches, each under its own lease schedule of about five to five and one-quarter years from its start date.
  • Rent: paid quarterly in advance. Each payment is one-twentieth of the financed cost of the tranche, plus an amount at a fixed annual rate on the outstanding lease balance, plus certain ongoing costs and expenses.
  • Size: SpaceX expects aggregate principal payments across the schedules of approximately $40 billion.

The fixed rate is not in the filing. SpaceX says it will be set at pricing, before it enters the master lease.

Timing and risks

Entering the master lease is subject to specified closing conditions. SpaceX expects it to close before the end of 2026, and expects the lease schedules to start in the first half of 2027, when the GPUs are delivered.

The filing warns that the deal may not close on these terms or this timeline, or at all. It also says equipment deliveries, lease terms and the total payments may differ from what SpaceX expects today.

What the filing leaves out

The 8-K does not name a GPU supplier. It describes the lessor only as an entity managed by Apollo and names no other financiers. It does not say which data centers will host the equipment, or what the hardware will be used for.

Press coverage came earlier. The Financial Times reported on October 7 that SpaceX was in talks on roughly $40 billion of financing for Nvidia chips, with Apollo leading. That was reporting on talks, and the 8-K is SpaceX's own account of a commitment.

Another report cited a $57 billion figure and named Nvidia, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and KKR. None of those names, and no $57 billion figure, appear in the 8-K.

What this means for you / what we checked

For people who use SpaceX services, the filing is about financing. It describes SpaceX leasing computing hardware rather than buying it outright, with payments spread over about five years per tranche. The filing does not discuss SpaceX products or prices.

Large AI hardware deals are being financed in several ways. Meta, for example, launched a $35B stock offering to fund AI infrastructure, and Anthropic's S-1 filing is a different route to funding. SpaceX has also been in the news for its 800 MHz spectrum deal. This is not investment advice.

We read the full SpaceX 8-K and took every figure about the lease from it. The press reports are background only, and we did not verify them.