Nvidia has agreed to provide a guarantee of up to $105 billion supporting OpenAI’s lease of a large artificial-intelligence data-centre campus in Ohio, marking one of the chipmaker’s biggest infrastructure-financing commitments. The facility is being developed by SB Energy, which is controlled by SoftBank, and could eventually reach eight gigawatts of total capacity.
Nvidia will also invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy. That follows a combined $1 billion investment from OpenAI and SoftBank intended to support an expansion of the developer’s data-centre infrastructure. Nvidia will serve as the exclusive chip provider for the Ohio campus, while OpenAI has entered into a 20-year lease.
The first 800 megawatts of capacity are expected to become operational in 2028. Nvidia said its guarantee applies to a portion of lease and power payments and includes a commitment that the site will retain a minimum value. It does not cover the entire cost of the project or all of OpenAI’s obligations. If OpenAI defaults, Nvidia would cover the difference between the guaranteed minimum value and the amount the owner could recover by selling or re-leasing the property.
Chief executive Jensen Huang said the arrangement secures long-lived infrastructure capable of hosting successive generations of Nvidia computing systems. He rejected the characterisation of the transaction as circular financing, describing it as the use of Nvidia’s scale and visibility to support infrastructure required by a major customer.
The guarantee expands Nvidia’s role beyond supplying accelerators, networking equipment and software into underwriting portions of the physical infrastructure in which its systems are deployed. The company has also partnered with six financial institutions, including BlackRock, on financing platforms targeting more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure.
Huang said the Ohio development, whose initial phase could reach 4.25 gigawatts, may generate as much as $200 billion in Nvidia revenue. He estimated that Nvidia could derive $600 billion from OpenAI by 2030 through the sale of systems supporting 16 gigawatts of computing capacity, including a possible 3.75-gigawatt expansion at the Ohio site. Those figures represent company projections rather than contracted revenue already recognised.
The transaction builds on the Stargate partnership established by OpenAI and SB Energy to develop AI and energy infrastructure in the United States.
Nvidia is simultaneously expanding cloud and data-centre partnerships in India. Its local cloud-provider ecosystem includes Yotta Data Services, which operates Shakti Cloud and has been scaling sovereign GPU infrastructure for Indian enterprises, startups and model developers.The scale of the Ohio commitment illustrates the financing, energy and long-term procurement structures increasingly being used to secure access to successive generations of accelerated computing.
