Nvidia’s newest disclosure gives Wall Street a fresh window into just how tangled the AI industry’s biggest deals have become. The chipmaker revealed this week that its SpaceX investment was worth nearly $21 billion at the end of June, a stake built through its backing of Elon Musk’s rocket company before its blockbuster stock market debut. The filing, made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, shows Nvidia holding nearly 123 million Class A shares in SpaceX — a position that has already swung wildly in value since the company went public.
Summary
Key takeaways
- Nvidia disclosed owning nearly 123 million SpaceX shares, worth almost $21 billion at the end of June.
- SpaceX shares have fallen sharply since the June IPO, cutting the value of Nvidia’s stake to roughly $17 billion.
- The stake traces back to Nvidia’s investment in xAI, completed in January, shortly before Musk merged the AI lab into SpaceX.
- SpaceX now has an exclusive deal to build its data centers with Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chip architecture.
- Nvidia is separately assembling a $500 billion investor consortium, involving firms like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, to help finance its customers.
Nvidia’s Multibillion-Dollar Stake in SpaceX Takes Shape
Nvidia’s position in SpaceX ranks among the most striking examples yet of how deeply the chipmaker has woven itself into the finances of its own customers. According to the SEC filing, Nvidia held SpaceX stock valued at nearly $21 billion as of the end of June — a figure that made the rocket maker one of Nvidia’s largest single holdings.
That value hasn’t held steady. SpaceX’s shares have declined since the company’s June initial public offering, and the stake Nvidia disclosed is now worth closer to $17 billion, based on more recent trading levels. The swing underscores just how volatile the young stock has been in its first months on the public market, even as SpaceX remains one of the most closely watched names to emerge from a record-setting IPO.
How the Stake Formed — Origins and Timeline
The shares didn’t come from a direct bet on SpaceX itself. Nvidia’s position originated with its investment in xAI, completed in January, shortly before Musk folded the AI lab into SpaceX. That earlier move has effectively delivered Nvidia a front-row seat — and a sizable equity stake — in one of the most valuable private companies in the world, simply by backing an AI venture that later merged with a rocket company.
An Exclusive Chip Partnership Behind the Numbers
Beyond the balance sheet, Nvidia and SpaceX are locked into a hardware relationship that goes well past a simple investor-investee arrangement. During SpaceX’s first public earnings call, Musk confirmed that the company has an exclusive relationship with Nvidia to build out its data center infrastructure, tying the rocket maker’s AI ambitions directly to Nvidia’s chip roadmap.
“We’ve decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think [its] Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture,” Musk said. “We think it’s the best AI computer and we greatly value our close co-operation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia.”
Why Vera Rubin Matters for SpaceX’s AI Ambitions
The Vera Rubin architecture sits at the center of that pledge. By committing exclusively to Nvidia’s platform for training and running AI models, SpaceX is betting that its computing backbone — and by extension its AI capabilities — will scale alongside whatever Nvidia ships next. That kind of exclusivity is rare among major cloud and AI infrastructure buyers, and it gives Nvidia a guaranteed customer for years of future chip generations.
Nvidia’s Wider Bet on AI Labs and a $500 Billion Financing Plan
SpaceX is just one thread in a much larger web. Nvidia has committed more than $100 billion to AI companies over the past two years, spreading its money across cloud computing start-ups and AI research labs alike. The strategy reflects chief executive Jensen Huang’s broader push to use Nvidia’s financial firepower to lock in customers, influence, and returns across the AI industry simultaneously.
Nvidia’s Startup Portfolio and Financing Consortium
Nvidia this week disclosed plans to assemble more than $500 billion from a consortium of investors, including Apollo Global, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, and KKR, to help finance its own customers. Under the plan, Nvidia would partially guarantee loans extended by those Wall Street firms, backed by the value of its chips — a structure that effectively lets Nvidia underwrite demand for its own hardware.
That’s worth pausing on. When a chipmaker starts guaranteeing the loans that fund purchases of its own products, and simultaneously holds equity stakes in the companies buying them, the lines between supplier, investor, and lender start to blur. It’s a strategy that can accelerate growth across the AI ecosystem, but it also means Nvidia’s fortunes are increasingly tied to the success of the very customers it’s bankrolling.
SpaceX’s Path to 10 Gigawatts — and Who Else Is Cashing In
SpaceX’s own ambitions give some sense of why Nvidia is so eager to be exclusively embedded in its infrastructure. Musk told investors that SpaceX plans to boost its computing capacity from 2 gigawatts at the end of this year to somewhere closer to 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027 — a jump that would require massive volumes of Nvidia hardware to pull off. That kind of SpaceX computing capacity growth would make the rocket maker one of the largest AI infrastructure buyers in the world, reinforcing why an exclusive chip deal matters so much to both companies.
Google’s Multibillion-Dollar Stake
Nvidia isn’t the only tech giant that has profited from SpaceX’s rise. Google owns roughly 7% of the rocket maker, a stake valued at approximately $94 billion. That scale of return highlights just how much SpaceX’s IPO valuation has reshaped the fortunes of its earliest institutional backers, even amid the stock’s rocky trading since its June debut.
Taken together, these disclosures paint a picture of an AI industry where the biggest winners aren’t just building the technology — they’re financing each other’s growth, buying stakes in each other’s companies, and locking in exclusive supply deals that make it hard to tell where one balance sheet ends and another begins.
FAQ
How much of SpaceX does Nvidia own and what is its stake worth?
Nvidia owns nearly 123 million SpaceX shares, valued at nearly $21 billion at the end of June, now worth about $17 billion after the stock’s decline since the IPO.
What is the nature of the partnership between Nvidia and SpaceX?
SpaceX has an exclusive agreement with Nvidia to use its Vera Rubin architecture chips for data center hardware, which Elon Musk has described as the best AI computing platform available.
What are Nvidia’s plans regarding AI investments and financing?
Nvidia has invested over $100 billion in AI companies over the past two years and plans to create a $500 billion investor consortium to finance customers through partially guaranteed loans.
What future growth does SpaceX plan in its computing infrastructure?
SpaceX aims to expand its computing capacity from 2 gigawatts at the end of this year to closer to 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, according to Elon Musk.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
