Broadcom Inc. and SpaceX pursue 'mega-deals,' borrowing tens of trillions of won to buy AI chips

[Financial News] As the cost of building artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure continues to rise, Broadcom Inc., SpaceX and Oracle Corporation are each seeking tens of billions of dollars in financing to buy AI semiconductors.
According to the U.S. daily The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 7th local time, Broadcom Inc. is seeking to raise at least $50 billion (about 67 trillion won) to fund custom AI chips it is co-developing with OpenAI. Apollo Global Management, Blackstone and others are discussing participating in the lending, and the final amount raised could change because talks are still at an early stage.
The funds raised by Broadcom Inc. could go toward building out OpenAI's own chips on a scale of several gigawatts (GW), with the deal targeted for completion before the end of the year. Last year, OpenAI and Broadcom Inc. agreed to jointly develop and build custom AI accelerators with a total capacity of 10 GW. OpenAI's in-house chip program is known internally as 'Nexus,' and its first- and second-generation chips were named 'Hallapeno' and 'Serrano,' respectively.
SpaceX has also recently been in talks with lenders about raising $40 billion (about 54 trillion won) to buy Nvidia AI chips. On the New York Stock Exchange that day, SpaceX shares fell 2.51%, while Nvidia was also down 0.74%.
Oracle Corporation is also negotiating with Apollo, Goldman Sachs and others to secure funds for large-scale semiconductor purchases. The amount it is seeking has not been disclosed, but the WSJ noted that “even the Nvidia chips needed for a 1 GW data center could cost tens of billions of dollars.”
Instead of taking on more debt directly, Oracle Corporation is considering a plan under which investors would set up a separate company to buy semiconductors and lease them to Oracle Corporation over the long term. The structure is said to bridge the financing gap between when the semiconductor costs must be paid upfront and when cloud revenue begins to come in, while limiting Oracle's own borrowing burden.
The AI race appears to be spreading beyond competition to develop models and secure semiconductors, becoming a competition to raise funds as well. The WSJ said that “demand for AI investment capital is now expanding into private credit and leasing through separate entities.”
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