Nvidia is in talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion of financing so OpenAI can lease a 10-gigawatt data-center campus that SoftBank's SB Energy subsidiary is developing in Piketon, Ohio, on the site of a former federal uranium-enrichment plant, the Wall Street Journal reported. The guarantee would cover lease payments and construction debt for what would be OpenAI's first data-center site as a direct tenant rather than a customer of Microsoft, Amazon, or Oracle.
Nvidia is reportedly discussing a separate, additional commitment of up to $350 billion to finance the accelerators that would go inside the campus once built — meaning the full project, land to chips, could run past $500 billion. The reported rationale for Nvidia's guarantee: OpenAI is not yet profitable and cannot secure investment-grade financing terms on its own for a project this size, so Nvidia's balance sheet does the backstopping instead. That structure would put Nvidia on the hook as a lender and guarantor to its own biggest customer, not just its chip supplier — a role reversal from its usual position in these deals.
Nvidia's Ohio backstop, as reported
- Lease/construction guarantee
- ~$250 billion
- Separate chip financing
- up to $350 billion
- Campus
- 10 gigawatts
- First phase
- ~800 MW
- Confirmed?
- No
None of it is finalized. Terms haven't been settled and the arrangement could still collapse, according to the Journal's own reporting, and Reuters has said it could not immediately verify the report independently. The first phase, roughly 800 megawatts, is reportedly targeted for 2028; powering the full campus would require about 9.2 gigawatts of new natural-gas generation plus $4.2 billion of transmission work with utility AEP Ohio, partly funded by a $33.3 billion commitment Japan made under its trade agreement with the U.S. Neither Nvidia nor OpenAI has confirmed any of the figures on the record.
- WSJ: Nvidia is in talks to guarantee about $250 billion so OpenAI can lease an Ohio data center.
- The 10-gigawatt campus, developed by SoftBank's SB Energy, sits on a former uranium-enrichment site.
- Nvidia is separately discussing financing up to $350 billion more for the chips going inside it.
- The backstop is reportedly needed because OpenAI lacks an investment-grade credit rating on its own.
- Caveat: terms aren't settled, neither company has confirmed the figures, and the deal could still collapse.