Nvidia Nears $100 Billion Credit Guarantee for OpenAI's Mega Data Center in Ohio

Nvidia is close to guaranteeing about $100 billion in credit so OpenAI can lease its 10-gigawatt data center campus in Pike County, Ohio — a project that could cost over $500 billion — The Information reports. Talks over a backstop of up to $250 billion first surfaced in July.

Key Takeaways

Nvidia is close to guaranteeing about $100 billion in credit so OpenAI can lease its 10-gigawatt data center campus in Pike County, Ohio — a project that could cost over $500 billion — The Information reports.
Talks over a backstop of up to $250 billion first surfaced in July.

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Nvidia is close to finalizing a deal to guarantee roughly $100 billion in credit that would help OpenAI lease a massive AI data center campus in Ohio, The Information reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The guarantee would let OpenAI raise debt for a 10-gigawatt data center project that could cost more than $500 billion in total, on the strength of Nvidia's credit. The site in Pike County, southern Ohio, once hosted a uranium-enrichment plant and is being developed by SoftBank and SB Energy in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. Ten gigawatts is roughly the annual power consumption of about 8 million U.S. households.

Talks first surfaced in July, when The Wall Street Journal and CNBC reported on a potential backstop of up to $250 billion. The figures have shifted as negotiations progressed: The Information reported on August 13 that the parties are now nearing an agreement around $100 billion, backstopping essentially the lease and construction debt — not the Nvidia chips inside, which the companies are negotiating separately.

A deal would be an unusually tight coupling between the leading AI chipmaker and the leading AI lab. Nvidia announced in September 2025 that it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership; that investment never materialized, though Nvidia contributed $30 billion to the record-breaking funding round OpenAI closed in March. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the time it might be "the last time" the company invests in OpenAI before it goes public. OpenAI confidentially filed for an initial public offering in June and is valued at nearly $1 trillion by private investors.

The Ohio campus is part of an unprecedented race to build AI compute capacity, with Anthropic, Google, Amazon and Meta also spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure. OpenAI declined to comment; Nvidia did not respond to requests.