Oracle, Broadcom, SpaceX seek debt deals for AI chips

By Anissa Gardizy, Matt Wirz and Justin Baer Big players in artificial intelligence are lining up a series of blockbuster financing deals to pay for computing hardware, part of a rush for capital as data-center build-outs race forward. In recent weeks, Broadcom has been working to arrange more than $50 billion in financing for OpenAI's custom artificial intelligence chip, which the firms are developing together, according to people familiar with the discussions. Apollo and Blackstone are among the lenders Broadcom has talked to about participating in the deal, people close to the situation said. Talks are early and the size of the deal could change.

Separately, Oracle is in talks with Apollo and Goldman Sachs to arrange money for a big purchase of chips, people familiar with the matter said. And SpaceX has talked to lenders in recent days about a $40 billion chip financing for Nvidia chips, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The Financial Times earlier reported on the SpaceX talks. The wave of deals reflects the mounting cost of building AI infrastructure.

Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Oracle have traditionally financed computing hardware through their own cash flows. For their AI build-outs, the companies issued hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds, pushing the public debt market to its limits. Now, some buyers are turning to Wall Street investment firms to help fund purchases totaling tens of billions of dollars per deal. There is also a new group of chip buyers, including OpenAI and Anthropic, who don't have the financial firepower to purchase their own hardware.

Leading AI labs historically rented the bulk of their computing capacity from cloud providers, but they now want to own more of their own infrastructure to help lower costs and reduce their reliance on other firms. The new Broadcom financing for OpenAI could include several gigawatts of OpenAI chip capacity, one of the people familiar with the discussions said. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year. OpenAI's chip program, known internally as Nexus, includes custom chips named after types of peppers, with the first- and second-generation versions known as Jalapeño and Serrano.

The deal would come a year after OpenAI and Broadcom announced a partnership in which they would develop 10 gigawatts of OpenAI's custom chips together using Broadcom's networking technology. The companies said they planned to deploy these systems starting in the second half of 2026 through the end of 2029. Oracle is also trying to get its deal done as soon as this year, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The company is still having discussions with multiple potential financing partners.

The financing is intended to help Oracle bridge the gap between when it has to pay for the hardware and when its cloud computing revenue starts coming in. It is not clear how many chips Oracle is looking to finance, but purchases of Nvidia chips for a 1 gigawatt data center would cost tens of billions of dollars. The financing would likely involve investors funding a separate company that purchases the chips, which Oracle would lease over time. That would help Oracle avoid borrowing more money itself, keeping debt costs under control as the company competes against larger tech firms with bigger war chests.

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