Nvidia discloses $21B stake in SpaceX

August 17, 2026 | Source: Ars Technica AI

Tags: Nvidia, SpaceX, Elon Musk, xAI, Vera Rubin, AI infrastructure, capital markets

Nvidia disclosed a ~$21B equity stake in SpaceX—acquired via its earlier xAI investment before Musk merged xAI with SpaceX—as SpaceX committed to building its expanding compute capacity exclusively on Nvidia's Vera Rubin architecture, targeting 10 gigawatts by end of 2027.

Details

Nvidia's SEC filing revealed ownership of approximately 123 million SpaceX shares, valued at nearly $21 billion at the end of June and around $17 billion after the post-IPO price decline. The stake traces back to Nvidia's investment in xAI, completed in January, shortly before Elon Musk combined xAI with SpaceX. On SpaceX's first public earnings call, Musk confirmed an exclusive hardware relationship: 'We've decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think its Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture.' SpaceX is currently at 2 gigawatts of compute capacity and plans to reach between 5 and 10 GW by end of 2027. This exclusive commitment represents a substantial future chip order for Nvidia. The filing fits a broader pattern. Nvidia has now committed over $100 billion to AI companies in two years—including stakes in CoreWeave, Thinking Machines, Safe Superintelligence, and Cursor (which SpaceX acquired for $60 billion this week). Nvidia also disclosed plans to syndicate $500 billion from institutional investors (Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman, KKR) to partially guarantee loans backed by chip value. Google, by comparison, owns roughly 7% of SpaceX worth ~$94 billion.