Nvidia discloses $21 billion stake in SpaceX, illustrating Jensen Huang’s circular ties

The filing reveals the scale of Nvidia’s return on its investment in the artificial-intelligence lab xAI, which closed in January, shortly before Elon Musk merged xAI into SpaceX. In other words, the early bet on Musk’s venture gave Nvidia a significant slice of the space company, and the current stake value reflects both the rise in xAI’s valuation and the decline in SpaceX’s share price after the IPO.

The move demonstrates how Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang leverages the financial might of the world’s most valuable chipmaker to weave complex, sometimes circular, financial links across the AI industry, including with several of its largest customers. Investing in a client that becomes a strategic partner creates a mutual dependence that strengthens Nvidia’s position in the supply chain, while also raising potential conflict-of-interest concerns when the chip supplier becomes a shareholder in a key customer.

In SpaceX’s first public earnings call last week, Elon Musk said the company had decided to build its data centers exclusively on Nvidia’s Vera Rubin architecture. “It is the best architecture that exists and the best AI computer,” he said, emphasizing the close multi-layer collaboration between the firms. The announcement positions the next generation of Nvidia chips as the foundational platform for the computing infrastructure of Musk’s space empire.