Nvidia is in talks to provide a roughly $250 billion financial backstop for OpenAI, part of a data center project in southern Ohio that could ultimately cost more than $500 billion — a scale that would make it the largest data center project ever announced.
The backstop would let OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt facility that SB Energy, SoftBank’s energy subsidiary, is building on the site of a decommissioned uranium-enrichment plant near Piketon, Ohio, roughly 50 miles south of Columbus, according to CNBC’s reporting.
Nvidia would guarantee financing tied to the lease and construction debt, since OpenAI, still unprofitable and privately held, lacks an investment-grade credit rating on its own.
The chips are a separate conversation
The $250 billion figure covers only the building and its lease — not the Nvidia hardware that would go inside it. In a parallel negotiation, Nvidia is discussing financing OpenAI’s actual chip purchases for the site, a deal that could reach another $350 billion.
Combined, the two arrangements could total roughly $600 billion — an amount that would rank among the largest single financing packages in the history of the technology industry.
Why a chipmaker is acting like a bank
Nvidia has already invested $30 billion directly in OpenAI. Backstopping the Ohio lease guarantees years of future demand for Nvidia’s own chips, since the facility is being purpose-built to run them.
Investor Michael Burry, known for betting against the broader AI sector, publicly criticized the structure over the weekend as Nvidia effectively guaranteeing OpenAI’s spending on Nvidia’s own products. This is a circularity that has drawn scrutiny given how much of the AI buildout now runs through similar vendor-financing arrangements.
The site’s power is controlled by the U.S. government and partly funded by Japan under a recent trade deal, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick involved in deciding which companies get access to it. Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google have each separately approached Lutnick about the same site, according to reporting — meaning the Ohio campus may end up hosting more than one AI lab’s infrastructure.
What to watch next
- Whether the deal terms firm up, given both companies have described the talks as preliminary and subject to change.
- Which other AI labs secure access to the same federally controlled power supply in southern Ohio.
- How rating agencies and lenders treat vendor-backed financing structures like this one across the rest of the AI infrastructure buildout.
Helpful Sources
- Nvidia and OpenAI in talks for up to $250 billion dollar AI backstop — CNBC
- Nvidia Reportedly Moves to Backstop $250 Billion in OpenAI Data Center Financing — Yahoo Finance
- Nvidia In Talks To Guarantee $250 Billion For OpenAI’s Ohio Data Center Project — HNGN
Keywords
Nvidia, OpenAI, AI data center financing, Ohio data center, SB Energy, SoftBank, AI infrastructure backstop, AI capex
