Nvidia has disclosed that it owns nearly 123 million shares in SpaceX, further highlighting the chipmaker’s entangled financial relationships with some of its biggest customers.
The $5.5 trillion company owned SpaceX stock worth nearly $21 billion at the end of June, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Elon Musk’s rocket conglomerate’s shares have fallen sharply since its June initial public offering, meaning Nvidia’s stake would now be worth $17 billion.
The disclosure marks a huge pay-off on Nvidia’s investment in xAI, completed in January, shortly before Musk combined the AI lab with SpaceX.
It underscores the scale of Nvidia chief Jensen Huang’s effort to use the financial power of the world’s most valuable company to forge complex and often circular financial links across the AI industry, including with some of his largest customers.
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, during SpaceX’s first public earnings call last week, said the company had an exclusive relationship with Nvidia to kit out its data centers.
“We’ve decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think [its] Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture,” he said. “We think it’s the best AI computer and we greatly value our close co-operation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia.”