Bengaluru, Feb 9, 2026, 22:58 IST
- Apollo is close to a roughly $3.4 billion loan tied to Nvidia chips that would be leased to Musk’s xAI, a report said.
- The funding could be finalized as soon as this week, with Valor Equity Partners arranging the deal.
- The talks build on a growing market for leasing expensive AI hardware instead of buying it outright.
Apollo Global Management is close to finalizing a roughly $3.4 billion loan to an investment vehicle that would buy Nvidia chips and lease them to Elon Musk’s xAI, The Information reported on Monday. Reuters
The timing is no accident. Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, are the workhorse chips used to train and run large AI systems, and the bill for them can hit before revenue does.
Big tech companies are expected to spend more than $600 billion this year on advanced chips and the massive data centers needed to train and deploy AI. Deals that turn hardware into lease payments are starting to look like the only way some builders keep up.
The Information said Valor Equity Partners, a longtime investor in Musk-led companies, is arranging the loan and that it could be wrapped up as soon as this week. SpaceX, Nvidia and xAI did not respond to requests for comment, while Apollo declined to comment. Theinformation
Apollo shares were up about 1% in U.S. trading on Monday, while Nvidia was up roughly 3.8%. Investors have treated any sign of sustained GPU demand as a tell for who controls the pace of AI spending.
The loan would be Apollo’s second major investment in a vehicle that leases chips to xAI, after a similar $3.5 billion loan in November. The basic pitch is simple: rent the compute, keep cash free for everything else.
Apollo said in January its funds led a $3.5 billion financing tied to a roughly $5.4 billion transaction arranged by Valor that leases data center compute infrastructure, including Nvidia GB200 GPUs, to an xAI subsidiary. Apollo partner Christopher Lahoud called it a “downside-protected” investment, while Valor founder Antonio Gracias said the fund gives investors exposure to “critical” AI compute assets. Apollo
That earlier financing used a triple-net lease — a structure where the renter pays most of the running costs in addition to rent — to support a large compute cluster, a network of servers and chips used for model training. Nvidia was an anchor investor in the vehicle.
The chip financing comes days after Musk said SpaceX had acquired xAI in a deal valuing SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, as he looks to tighten links between his companies. PitchBook analyst Ali Javaheri said Starlink “adds an AI revenue layer,” and flagged the prospect of orbital data centers — space-based infrastructure meant to support next-generation computing. Reuters
Musk’s push puts xAI in a crowded race with rivals including Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic and OpenAI, all of which are spending heavily on chips and data centers.
Apollo is leaning harder into lending at the same time. The firm reported a 13% rise in fourth-quarter profit on Monday and said it originated a record $97 billion in new loans and other investments; CEO Marc Rowan said the market’s “overreaction” has been sharp in places. Reuters
But the xAI-linked loan is not signed, and terms could still shift or fall apart. If demand for AI services cools or chip prices swing, a leasing vehicle can be left holding hardware that ages fast and loses value, while the tenant still has to pay.
For now, financiers are treating AI compute like infrastructure: build it, lease it, refinance it. Whether that holds up will depend on how long the current burst of AI spending stays real and how quickly the chips on the balance sheet become yesterday’s model.
