Ahead of a massive AI infrastructure push, Apollo nears a $3.4 billion chip-leasing deal for xAI as Elon Musk accelerates plans for orbital data centres.
Apollo Global Management is close to finalising a $3.4 billion loan for an investment vehicle that plans to buy advanced NVIDIA chips. It will then lease them to Elon Musk’s AI venture, xAI, according to a report by Reuters.
The deal could be completed as early as this week. Valor Equity Partners is arranging the financing, a longtime backer of Musk’s companies. However, neither Apollo nor SpaceX nor NVIDIA nor xAI commented officially on this matter.
The financing comes amid rapid expansion across Musk’s technology businesses. In the first week of February 2026, Musk announced a deal linking SpaceX and xAI, valuing SpaceX at around $1 trillion and xAI at about $250 billion. Musk has said the tie-up aims to support plans for orbital data centres, which would use space-based infrastructure to power future AI computing.
The proposed loan also reflects the intensifying global race to build AI infrastructure. Big technology companies are expected to spend more than $600 billion this year on advanced chips and large-scale data centres needed to train and deploy AI systems.
Leasing high-performance chips and compute capacity has become an increasingly popular model for fast-growing AI companies, as it allows them to scale quickly while conserving capital that would otherwise be locked into expensive hardware. The arrangement shifts ownership and maintenance risks to specialised investment vehicles.
If completed, the transaction would mark Apollo’s second major financing of a vehicle set up to lease chips to xAI. In November 2025, Apollo provided around $3.5 billion to a similar structure. The company said its funds led $3.5 billion in financing for a larger $5.4 billion data-centre compute deal arranged by Valor, structured as a triple-net lease to support one of the world’s largest AI training clusters, with NVIDIA acting as an anchor investor.
