According to a person familiar with the matter, Apollo Global Management LLC and several banks are in discussions with SpaceX to help facilitate the company's purchase of $40 billion worth of NVIDIA graphics processors. The person requested anonymity because the discussions are private.

The deal would rely primarily on the investment-grade debt market, which SpaceX only entered four months ago. Two weeks after its record-breaking IPO in mid-June, the space exploration company issued $25 billion in bonds across different maturities. Demand for SpaceX's bond sale was exceptionally strong, underscoring intense interest from fixed-income investors. But since then, AI-related bonds have been sold off while credit spreads have widened.

The person said SpaceX's $40 billion debt deal would likely use GPUs as collateral, with Apollo Global Management LLC reportedly playing a leading role in arranging the financing. According to a credit industry source, the market continues to operate on an expectation of roughly seven years for GPU value. Computing power is scarce, and the shortage is not expected to ease soon, which supports the value of high-performance GPUs.

Despite the attention such a large bond deal would attract, it follows a series of bond issuances by Meta, Amazon and Google as the cost of financing AI buildouts has become more expensive. Both sources said more debt sales are expected, with fixed-income investors demanding higher yields to service the debt, signaling that participants are becoming more selective about their AI exposure.