Nvidia in Talks to Provide $250 Billion Financial Backstop for OpenAI's Ohio Data Center
Nvidia is in talks with OpenAI to provide roughly $250 billion in financial guarantees for a massive AI data center campus in southern Ohio — if finalized, it would be the largest single financing arrangement in AI infrastructure history.
Three Key Takeaways
The project is unprecedented in scale. The data center, being built by SoftBank's subsidiary SB Energy, sits on a decommissioned uranium enrichment facility about 50 miles south of Columbus, Ohio. It is designed for 10 gigawatts of total power, with an all-in cost potentially exceeding $500 billion. Phase one targets completion in 2028 with roughly 800 megawatts online. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright broke ground on the site in March.
The $250 billion covers only lease financing. According to CNBC and Digitimes, Nvidia's guarantee would apply strictly to lease and construction financing — chip procurement costs sit outside its scope. Nvidia's role is to reassure lenders that the project's funding is rock-solid. In effect, the GPU supplier is becoming the credit guarantor for its own customer's infrastructure. The site's power is controlled by the U.S. government and separately funded under a Japan-U.S. trade agreement.
Chip financing could add another $350 billion. Beyond the lease backstop, the two companies are separately discussing chip-level financing that could reach $350 billion. Combined, Nvidia's total financial exposure on this single project could approach $600 billion — roughly the GDP of a mid-sized developed nation.
WangDou's Take
Put the numbers side by side and the picture gets strange fast. Nvidia's fiscal 2025 revenue was about $130 billion. Now it is discussing guaranteeing $250 billion — nearly two years of total revenue — for one customer's building project. This is no longer selling GPUs; it is the GPU maker co-signing the mortgage so its biggest buyer can keep buying. Wall Street might want to reclassify Nvidia under "financial engineering." What is equally notable is the site itself: a retired uranium plant, power controlled by the U.S. government, funded by Japan under a trade deal. AI compute is literally parasitizing Cold War–era infrastructure. The deal is not finalized, but the sheer scale of the discussion tells you something: AI infrastructure has entered a capital-intensity tier where only sovereign-level players can sit at the table.
Source: CNBC, Digitimes, SiliconANGLE