SpaceX-related party maze puts Valor and Musk in the spotlight for creditors
Fortune’s investigation into SpaceX and Antonio Gracias’ Valor Equity Partners revealed more than $20 billion in related GPU leasing companies restructured as debt, a management conflict that could backfire on Musk’s AI-connected and crypto venture capital.
Summary
- Valor funds own more than 500 million shares of SpaceX Class A that are worth an estimated $90 billion to $140 billion at rumored IPO valuations.
- Three xAI GPU leases with Valor, guaranteed by SpaceX, total close to $20 billion in commitments
- PwC was forced to book about $9 billion of that lease as a related party liability on SpaceX’s balance sheet.
- The structure increases the dominance and risk of torture surrounding Musk’s close AI, infra and crypto narratives.
According to Fortune, the Valor entities controlled by Antonio Gracias already own more than 500 million Class A shares in SpaceX, about 7.3 percent of the company, making him the second largest shareholder after Elon Musk.
At the estimate of $ 1.75 trillion that SpaceX is aiming for in its IPO, that stake would be worth about $ 90 billion, and if the company counts close to $ 2 trillion, the value will exceed $ 140 billion, immediately placing Gracias in the elite of global wealth.
How much is Valor’s SpaceX stake and why is the lease important?
The same information reports that, since last October, a subsidiary of xAI within SpaceX called CTC has signed an equipment lease agreement with Valor for high-end AI infrastructure hardware, specifically Nvidia GPUs used to power xAI data centers.
Two more GPUs were leased in January and April, and together the three Valor agreements oblige the xAI unit to pay about $20 billion on its terms, with SpaceX itself guaranteeing payments if the subsidiary can’t pay them.
Fortune notes that Valor entities have already collected about $885 million in rents in 2025 and another $857 million in the first two months of 2026, turning this structure into a major cash flow for Musk’s long-time partner ahead of the IPO.
Auditors at PwC concluded that the transactions were “primarily loans, not leases,” forcing SpaceX to record nearly $9 billion of the deal as a related group debt owed to Valor on its balance sheet.
That restructuring comes on top of already heavy debt, after a previous report showed SpaceX’s total debt rising to nearly $23 billion by 2025, much of it related to lease-style financing for xAI’s GPU buildout.
This means that IPO investors are not just betting on rockets and satellites but on a deeply intertwined pool of money where Musk’s AI venture, Valor’s compute funds, and SpaceX’s securities all sit atop the same risk pyramid.
Why does this matter about AI and cryptocurrency?
GPU and Valor’s lease agreements do not exist in a vacuum; they are standing by xAI’s pursuit of up to $20 billion in additional chip financing, organized through vehicles in which Valor, Apollo, Nvidia and other creditors fund Nvidia hardware that is then leased to xAI.
In one such structure described by Bloomberg and summarized by CryptoRank, about $7.5 billion and up to $12.5 billion in debt will be used to buy GPUs, with xAI leasing them for five years and Nvidia itself contributing up to $2 billion.
Meanwhile, Apollo announced a $3.5 billion settlement of Valor Compute Infrastructure to support the acquisition and lease of $5.4 billion of data processing hardware, including Nvidia GB200 GPUs, to subsidiary xAI, underscoring how much Wall Street debt is now tied up in Musk’s AI stack.
As ChainCatcher’s summary of the Fortune report shows, this mix of leases and guarantees raises classic management questions, because one of SpaceX’s directors stands on both sides of the trade and collects debt service from the company he directs.
If regulators, rating agencies, or public market investors decide that these arrangements are too close to selling themselves or that the profit profile is exposed, the immediate impact will be higher cost of capital or tighter contracts for Musk. AI and infra connected cars.
That filters into a broader risk complex where Musk’s words take an overwhelming share of thought, from xAI tokens and AI infrastructure plays in public markets to private rounds of data center projects that often overlap with crypto, edge computing and decentralized infrastructure segments.
Any serious blow to the perceived integrity or solvency of the SpaceX xAI Valor triangle could depress prices and risk appetite in the near term, reducing the dollar available for speculative bets, including Musk’s AI-inspired and crypto crossovers.
