Nvidia, OpenAI, and SoftBank-backed SB Energy have finalized a landmark deal for one of the largest AI data center projects ever built, with Nvidia providing up to $105 billion in financing guarantees.
The deal
Nvidia will invest $1.5 billion directly in SB Energy and provide credit guarantees of up to $105 billion to help OpenAI lease a sprawling 8-gigawatt data center campus at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in southern Ohio. The initial phase will deliver 4.25 GW of capacity — enough to power millions of homes — with SB Energy and SoftBank planning to build at least 10 GW of new power generation and invest $4.2 billion in Ohio grid infrastructure to support the facility.
OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease for the computing capacity, which will use Nvidia's graphics processors and networking equipment.
Nvidia's financing strategy
The deal represents Nvidia's most aggressive move yet in financing the very ecosystem that consumes its chips. By backstopping the financing for data centers, Nvidia helps ensure that the massive demand for AI computing translates into actual construction and capacity — while also locking in customers for its own products.
This strategy has helped fuel AI demand but has also drawn scrutiny over circular flows of funds from the chipmaker to its biggest customers. Critics have questioned whether Nvidia's financial backing creates artificial demand that could be unsustainable.
Scale of the project
At 8 GW, the Ohio campus would be among the largest data center complexes in the world. For context, a single gigawatt can power roughly 750,000 homes. The project signals the extraordinary scale of infrastructure being built to support the next generation of AI models, which require increasingly enormous computing resources for training and inference.
The deal comes as leading tech firms are increasingly tying together chips, power generation, and data center development in a race to secure the infrastructure needed for power-hungry AI systems.
