SpaceX wants $20 billion to refinance the bridge loan it took out in February to buy xAI.

According to Reuters and Bloomberg, Elon Musk’s company is preparing to tap bond investors just a week after raising $75 billion in its stock market debut. The issue will be managed by the same five banks that extended the original loan: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

SpaceX’s debt from the xAI acquisition

To join the race for data centers, Musk bought the startup xAI in February. The five banks put $20 billion on the table, maturing in September 2027.

That sum now accounts for almost all of SpaceX’s long-term debt, which stood at $29.1 billion as of March 31, according to the prospectus filed ahead of the IPO. The same banks that lent the money will now manage the bond that repays it.

SpaceX’s AI ambitions are a capital black hole

SpaceX’s AI infrastructure costs tens of billions of dollars in data centers, energy and computing hardware.

To pay for it, Musk has signed two contracts: one with Alphabet worth $30 billion through the middle of 2029, and another with Anthropic worth $45 billion over roughly three years. That’s real money (in the future), but it doesn’t cover the cash needed today.

It shows in the first-quarter 2026 results: a net loss of $4.28 billion on revenue of $4.69 billion. A year earlier, the loss was $528 million on about $4 billion in revenue.

SpaceX’s valuation topped $2.4 trillion after its market debut, enough to make Musk the world’s first trillionaire. The market bet on the potential. The debt is a real and present need.

A rating above junk

On Thursday, June 18, all three verdicts from the rating agencies came in: S&P at BBB, Moody’s at Baa1, Fitch at BBB+. All investment grade, well above the junk threshold. That means access to a broader pool of institutional investors and a lower cost of debt.

«The company is likely to want to consolidate its presence in the debt markets soon», Matt Woodruff, an analyst at CreditSights, told Bloomberg. «They will need liquidity for future investments: the sooner, the better». The IPO prospectus itself already confirmed as much: capital expenditures will rise substantially, and SpaceX expects to rely on «a range of debt and equity financing solutions».

But the $20 billion issue serves only to refinance an old loan. The capital gap for data centers and energy remains and, if anything, could widen.

Raising fresh capital would mean new shares, and therefore dilution for those who bought in at $135 or more after the listing.

The valuation north of $2.4 trillion, often cited as the implicit guarantee behind the debt, is the price paid for 4% of the shares. It is not what you would get by selling the remaining 96%, currently frozen by the lock-up. When those restrictions lift, the supply of shares in circulation will grow. The price, probably, will not.

Editor’s note

This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Claudia Cervi on June 19, 2026 as «SpaceX, dopo il debutto in Borsa arriva il debito. 20 miliardi per pagare xAI». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.