Afternoon Brief, August 15th 2026

Nvidia's SpaceX stake lost billions this week, and its Intel bet is up sixfold

A filing disclosed Thursday shows what Nvidia's chip-buyer investments were worth at quarter-end June 30th: a $21 billion stake in SpaceX, roughly $30 billion in Intel shares, and a complete exit from Arm Holdings, the chip designer Nvidia once tried to buy for $40 billion. The SpaceX position traces back to a $10 billion investment Nvidia made in xAI in January; when SpaceX acquired xAI in an all-stock deal in February, every xAI share converted into 122.8 million shares of SpaceX Class A stock. The Intel stake began as a $5 billion private placement at $23.28 a share last September, part of the deal that kept struggling Intel's foundry business funded. Both bets have moved since the quarter closed. SpaceX shares fell to $140 by Friday's close, down from roughly $170.86 at the end of June, cutting the stake's value to about $17 billion, nearly $4 billion lower than the filing's snapshot. Musk told SpaceX investors on its earnings call that the company will "build exclusively on Nvidia" for its Vera Rubin-generation data centers and expects a large allocation of the chips next year. That is the return Nvidia is actually underwriting: not the stock price on a given Friday, but a guaranteed customer for the hardware that funds the rest of the balance sheet. SourcesBC