Nvidia commits up to $105 billion to back OpenAI’s Ohio data center

The chipmaker is tying its financial support to long-lived infrastructure and the residual value of the hardware that will run on it.

Nvidia has agreed to provide a guarantee of up to $105 billion to help OpenAI lease a sprawling data center in Ohio ​being developed by SoftBank-owned SB Energy, in one of the chipmaker’s largest infrastructure financing commitments. The Jensen Huang-led firm said on Monday it will also invest $1.5 ‌billion in SB Energy, months after […]

The financing and infrastructure role puts the AI vendor at the center of another multibillion-dollar data center project.

Nvidia Confirms It Will Back Massive 4.25GW SoftBank Data Center In Ohio For $105 Billion Nvidia has confirmed reports that it is financially backing SoftBank's massive data center at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, with up to $105 billion in financing, a securities filing revealed on Monday. The project, led by SB Energy, is set to be fully leased to OpenAI. The facility could grow to 10GW, making it the world's largest data center, but Nvidia will initially support the first 4.25GW, DataCenterDynamics reported. In a LinkedIn post, Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang confirmed that his company would partner with SB Energy to help secure land, power, and shell (LPS) capacity at the Department of Energy (DOE) site.  The GPU giant will provide a $105bn backstop for the project, helping lower debt costs, similar to previous SPV project financings and reusing the structure popularized by Meta in late 2025 with its Project Beignet off balance sheet structure to fund its massive Hyperion data center . It had initially planned to support as much as $250bn, but faced investor pushback over the extent of the risk. As a reminder, META is already neck deep in off-balance sheet debt. Here is a schematic of its $27.3 billion SPV with Blue Owl "Project Beignet" for the Hyperion data center. None of this touches META's balance sheet. Expect hundreds of billions of these in 2026 https://t.co/794EgSiiZ9 pic.twitter.com/7hMyVW6Lno — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 29, 2026 Nvidia will also invest $1.5bn in SB Energy, down from a reported $3bn. The SoftBank subsidiary, which is preparing for an IPO, is set to build 10GW of new power generation, including 9.2GW of natural gas generation, to power the facility. This will provide up to 8GW of total IT load. SB Energy and SoftBank also plan to invest at least $4.2bn in new regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio they say is designed to protect ratepayers. "Nvidia is supporting the LPS infrastructure at Ports-Pike for approximately 4GW over a 20-year term, securing a site on which Nvidia compute will be exclusively deployed," Huang said. "Our support is limited to defined portions of lease and power payments, along with a specified residual-value commitment — not the full cost of the site or all of the tenant’s obligations. The guarantee will become effective in phases as data centers are placed in service between 2028 and 2030. As OpenAI makes lease payments and capacity comes online, Nvidia's remaining exposure declines." Huang said that most companies will secure LPS independently, and then buy Nvidia gear, but that leading AI labs are "growing faster than their balance sheets and long-term credit profiles can support. Ports-Pike will not only exclusively feature Nvidia GPUs, but also the company's full-stack DSX AI factory platform, including CPUs, networking, and infrastructure software. Over 20 years, it is expected to feature multiple generations of Nvidia gear. "Each generation of Nvidia AI factory systems deployed at Ports-Pike could represent approximately 1.5 million Nvidia GPUs, or approximately $150 billion to $200 billion in Nvidia revenue," he said. The company may yet decide to secure the remaining capacity of 3.75GW at the site. Huang claimed that the deal was not an example of circular financing, an accusation the company has increasingly faced as it has funneled its profits back into the AI companies that buy its hardware. "Nvidia uses its scale and long-term visibility to secure Ports-Pike to host Nvidia compute," he said. "This is the same discipline we apply to supply-chain management: we secure critical inputs when we have visibility into customer demand and when doing so enables long-term productive capacity." Tyler Durden Tue, 08/18/2026 - 10:25

OpenAI has signed a 10-gigawatt data-center lease in Ohio with SoftBank's SB Energy, a deal partly backed by Nvidia and described as the largest data-center project announced to date. The agreement caps weeks of negotiations over the project.Nvidia's financial backstopAccording to WSJ, the deal is backed by a commitment from Nvidia intended to help the developer raise debt financing without exposing the chipmaker to substantial risk. Nvidia has agreed to backstop a portion of the value of the completed data center, starting with the first phase, which represents around 5 gigawatts of power. In exchange, Nvidia will be the exclusive chip provider for the first half of the Ohio site and will take an equity stake in SB Energy, with the option to expand its commitment to the full campus later.Who Is Chloe Bakalar? OpenAI's AI Ethics Lead Resigns Less Than a Year After JoiningOpenAI's 20-year lease is the latest in a series of complex transactions aimed at helping AI firms secure large amounts of computing capacity, with chip companies including Nvidia and Google increasingly using their balance sheets to help startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic sign leases they can raise debt against.Site details and government involvementThe southern Ohio campus is partly located on a former uranium-enrichment site owned by the US Department of Energy and is expected to generate enough energy to power seven million homes. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have been closely involved in the project.OpenAI Expands Daybreak Cybersecurity Programme, Launches More Permissive GPT-5.6-Cyber ModelNvidia's support is meant to make the project cheaper to finance by reassuring lenders that the data centers would hold their value even if OpenAI stopped being the tenant, with a structure requiring several mitigation steps, including SB Energy first trying to re-lease or sell the site, before Nvidia would owe any payments, up to $105 billion for the initial phase.Commercial stakes for NvidiaNvidia is expected to sell hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of chips into the project's first phase and has discussed financing OpenAI's chip purchases for the campus. As part of the arrangement, Nvidia said it would make a $1.5 billion equity investment in SB Energy, which is majority-owned by Japan's SoftBank and counts OpenAI as an investor; SB Energy is reportedly working with bankers on a possible IPO as soon as next month, aiming to raise between $5 billion and $7 billion.Nvidia had initially planned to guarantee OpenAI's full 10-gigawatt commitment, a package that could have totaled around $250 billion, before the scale of the backstop was reworked in recent days to address investor concerns.The campus will depend on a 9.2-gigawatt natural-gas plant owned by the US government and financed by Japan under a recent trade deal.

OpenAI has inked a 20-year deal for the site, which will ultimately provide about eight gigawatts of computing capacity that will help support products like ChatGPT. In energy terms, a single gigawatt can power approximately 750,000 homes.

OpenAI has signed a 10-year lease for an enormous Ohio data center that will eventually provide 8 gigawatts of computing capacity and require at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation. According to OpenAI, Nvidia will be supplying the chips and guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease and power obligations. From the report: The facility -- which will be built and owned by SoftBank's SB Energy -- illustrates the immensity of the computing and power needed to fuel the growth of the AI economy. The data center will have 8 IT-gigawatts of computing capacity, powered by 10 gigawatts of new energy generation, on private land and federal property formerly used for uranium enrichment. Nvidia -- which will be the exclusive provider of chips to the site -- agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in conditional lease and power payment obligations to SB Energy, according to an SEC filing (PDF). The so-called "land, power and shell" deal structure could allow for multiple upgrade cycles for new generations of Nvidia infrastructure at the site, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on X. A massive 9.2 gigawatts of new gas-fired power is ultimately envisioned for the Ohio project, which U.S. officials say Japan is funding under the 2025 trade and investment deal. SB Energy and SoftBank "will build at least 10 GW of new energy generation," a joint announcement from Nvidia, OpenAI and SB Energy states. Nvidia also said today that it's investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy to back its "continued evolution into a leading AI infrastructure developer." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The data center, one of the world’s largest, could cost as much as $500 billion and will be leased by OpenAI.

Nvidia has agreed to ⁠guarantee as much as US$105 billion ⁠in lease payments to help ⁠OpenAI secure a sprawling data centre in Ohio being developed by SoftBank-backed SB Energy, in one of the chipmaker’s largest infrastructure financing commitments. The chip giant will also invest US$1.5 billion in SB Energy and secure up to 8 gigawatts of AI computing capacity at ‌the site, where the data centre developer will build, own and operate a campus for OpenAI under a 20-year lease, the companies said...

SB Energy and SoftBank plan $4.2 billion in Ohio power infrastructure as Nvidia backs an OpenAI data centre with up to 8GW of capacity.

Technology giants are shelling out billions to scale capacity to meet massive data center demand.

OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease for 8 gigawatts of AI computing capacity at SB Energy's PORTS-Pike campus in Pike County, Ohio, with Nvidia backing the deal. Nvidia becomes the exclusive compute supplier, invests $1.5 billion in SB Energy, and guarantees the finished data centre's value up to $105 billion. The project promises 35,000 construction jobs and $80 million in community funding.

Nvidia Corp. has agreed to spend as much as $105 billion to support a massive new data center campus in Ohio set to be leased by OpenAI, according to a financial filing, marking the latest tie-up between two dominant forces driving the AI boom.