According to Business Today, Nvidia has disclosed ownership of nearly 123 million shares in Elon Musk's SpaceX. The stake was worth almost $21 billion at the end of June but has since fallen to about $17 billion as SpaceX shares dropped sharply following the company's June initial public offering.
The disclosure also sheds light on Nvidia's investment in xAI, which was completed in January, shortly before Musk combined the AI lab with SpaceX. It highlights how Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is using the financial strength of the $5.5 trillion chipmaker to build financial links across the AI industry, including with some of its biggest customers.
Musk said during SpaceX's first public earnings call last week that the rocket company has an exclusive relationship with Nvidia to equip its data centres:
"We've decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think [its] Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it's the best AI computer and we greatly value our close co-operation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia." — as cited by the Financial Times.
AI investment portfolio
Nvidia has committed more than $100 billion to AI companies over the past two years, according to Business Today. Its investments include cloud computing start-ups such as CoreWeave and AI labs including Thinking Machines and Safe Superintelligence. The chipmaker has also invested in Cursor, the code-editing start-up that SpaceX acquired for $60 billion this week.
| Investment / holding | Key fact |
|---|---|
| Nvidia stake in SpaceX | ~123 million shares; worth ~$21bn (end-June), ~$17bn after June IPO |
| Google stake in SpaceX | ~7% per FactSet; $900m invested in 2015; valued ~$94bn in July |
$500 billion 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 customers. The company plans to partially guarantee loans from the Wall Street investors, with the loans backed by the value of its chips.
The financial commitments have helped accelerate the building of AI infrastructure and have tied parts of the industry more closely to Nvidia's technology, Business Today reported.
SpaceX computing capacity plans
SpaceX plans to increase its computing capacity from 2 gigawatts at the end of this year to "closer to 10GW [than 5GW]" by the end of 2027, Musk told investors last week.
Early-backer returns
SpaceX's IPO has generated huge returns for its early backers. Google owns roughly 7% of SpaceX, according to FactSet data, after initially investing $900 million in 2015. The search giant told investors in July that its stake was valued at about $94 billion.
For finance executives and treasurers, the disclosure positions Nvidia simultaneously as SpaceX's exclusive data-centre chip supplier, an equity holder in the rocket company, and a guarantor of customer loans collateralised by chip value. The $500 billion consortium plan also places Nvidia at the centre of AI infrastructure financing, linking the cost of data-centre capital to the value of its chips.
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