OpenAI has signed a 10-gigawatt data-center deal in Ohio with SoftBank’s SB Energy that is partly backed by Nvidia, a project expected to become one of the largest artificial-intelligence hubs to date.
Nvidia has the option to expand its commitment later on to the full campus. Chip firms including Nvidia and Google have increasingly agreed to use their robust balance sheets to help startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic sign leases that developers can raise debt against while trying to manage their own risk. The chip giant’s guarantee covers completed data centers, not facilities under construction.
Nvidia has agreed to backstop a portion of the value of the completed data center at the site, starting with the first phase of the project, which represents around 5 gigawatts of power. OpenAI’s 20-year lease, parts of which were announced Monday, is the latest complex transaction aimed at helping an AI firm secure an enormous amount of computing capacity.
In return for its commitment, Nvidia will be the exclusive chip provider for the first half of the Ohio site and take an equity stake in SB Energy, the people said. Nvidia’s support is intended to make the project easier and less expensive to finance by giving lenders greater confidence that the data centers would retain value even if OpenAI were no longer the tenant, the people with knowledge of the deal said. By backing the asset value of the data center—not OpenAI’s ongoing lease payments—the structure limits Nvidia’s risk exposure substantially, those people familiar with the deal said.
Nvidia’s commitment is structured to require a series of mitigation steps before the chip maker would be obligated to make any payments.
