Trump to Honor Tech Leaders as SpaceX Seeks $40 Billion for Nvidia Chips, Samsung Backs Helix

White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston said in an emailed statement that the administration is grateful for the leaders' contributions and that the recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation. Each recipient has financially contributed to Trump or Republican campaigns and causes, according to the reports. Musk was Trump's biggest financial backer in the 2024 election cycle, contributing more than $290 million, and later led an effort to cut the federal workforce as a special government employee. Brin attended Trump's inauguration and contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican National Committee in 2025. Huang donated to a fund to build Trump's White House ballroom, and Nvidia contributed $1 million to Trump's inauguration ceremony. Dell and his wife Susan committed $6.25 billion to seed Trump Accounts. AMD is also contributing to Trump funds. According to his most recent disclosure, Trump bought or sold shares in SpaceX, Tesla, Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD and Alphabet as recently as July.

Separately, SpaceX is seeking to raise $40 billion to buy more Nvidia chips, according to the Financial Times, in a financing effort that CNBC later confirmed. Apollo Global Management and a consortium of other banks are in early talks about helping finance the deal, though CNBC sources said there was no timeline for closing. The FT said the deal could include $10 billion in bank loans and an additional $30 billion in investment-grade debt. In June, SpaceX raised $25 billion in a debt sale to fund AI ambitions including renting out compute to customers such as Anthropic and Alphabet's Google, less than two weeks after its record initial public offering.

CNBC's Jim Cramer said Wednesday he is excited about SpaceX's efforts to secure more capital for Nvidia chips. "The more Nvidia [that SpaceX] buys, the more money it makes," Cramer said during the Morning Meeting. He added that Musk is doing what Huang outlined: "Buy our compute and then lend it, and you'll make a fortune." Cramer said the message is clear, pointing to Musk as "the most powerful person in the world saying, 'You know what? If you want to make money, buy Nvidia chips.'" Cramer tied the comments to Nvidia's August earnings report, saying demand is strong because customers find investing in chips profitable, countering bearish arguments that AI compute spending is out of control. On Nvidia's August earnings call, Huang said he recently heard that "return on investment capital is now less than a year. And we're talking about $50 billion data centers. So, that tells you something about the productivity of Nvidia's technology and the rentability of it."

SpaceX stock dropped roughly 2.5% Wednesday in a tough market for tech stocks but is up nearly 60% since its all-time low of about $105 on Aug. 3. The IPO was priced at $135, and the stock soared above $225 shortly after its June 12 debut before falling. It has moved past the first IPO lockup expiration in early August and benefited from improving sentiment around some AI infrastructure stocks. Morgan Stanley called the stock "cheap and getting cheaper" in a Sunday note. Wall Street projects SpaceX's AI segment will bring in $6.22 billion in revenue in the September quarter before jumping to $11.27 billion in the December period. In August, Musk pledged to buy only Nvidia chips for SpaceX, saying, "We've decided to build exclusively on Nvidia because we think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture." Nvidia shares dropped less than 1% Wednesday after closing at back-to-back record highs. The stock has gained momentum since Nvidia announced on Sept. 28 that it was boosting its buyback program by $150 billion to $235 billion.

Samsung and five affiliated businesses are committing $1 billion to Helix Digital Infrastructure, deepening the group's involvement in AI infrastructure. Samsung Electronics will provide $500 million, while five other affiliates supply the remaining investment. Helix was established by KKR in June 2026 to develop data centers while securing electricity and network connections. Its founding investors also include Nvidia, Kuwait Investment Authority and U.S. electricity company Vistra. Samsung Electronics contributes memory technology, and its FläktGroup subsidiary provides cooling systems. Samsung C&T can handle engineering and construction, Samsung SDS develops data centers and provides rented GPU computing capacity, and Samsung SDI adds batteries for uninterrupted power systems. Samsung says the arrangement could help it move from supplying hardware toward participating directly in building AI infrastructure. Helix also plans to obtain power capacity, making electricity availability an important part of its development model. Among rivals, Huawei has capabilities spanning Ascend processors, storage, networking, security, cooling and electricity infrastructure, while SoftBank has semiconductor interests through Arm, Ampere Computing and Graphcore and plans an AI facility in Ohio.