Nvidia Invests $1.5B in SB Energy and Backs OpenAI's Ohio Megasite With Up to $105B

Nvidia said it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, the SoftBank-linked data center developer behind OpenAI's planned campus near Cincinnati, Ohio, securing its role as sole compute supplier at the site. The company will also provide up to $105 billion in credit for the facility, which could scale to 8 gigawatts and includes a $33 billion gas power plant on a former US uranium enrichment site.

Key Takeaways

Nvidia said it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, the SoftBank-linked data center developer behind OpenAI's planned campus near Cincinnati, Ohio, securing its role as sole compute supplier at the site.
The company will also provide up to $105 billion in credit for the facility, which could scale to 8 gigawatts and includes a $33 billion gas power plant on a former US uranium enrichment site.

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Nvidia said on Monday that it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, the data center and power developer behind OpenAI's planned computing campus near Cincinnati, Ohio — deepening the semiconductor giant's role in the biggest AI infrastructure project of its kind.

The investment guarantees that Nvidia will be the sole supplier of compute infrastructure at the Ports-Pike site, which is designed to start at 4.25 gigawatts and scale to 8 gigawatts. According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Nvidia will also provide up to $105 billion in credit to help finance the facility — a commitment scaled back from earlier reports of a $250 billion backstop.

The site occupies land owned by the US Department of Energy that once enriched uranium for the country's nuclear arsenal and Navy submarines. There, SB Energy plans to build a 9.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant expected to cost $33 billion — a figure that reflects the soaring price of gas-fired construction, which has risen 66% in two years, according to BloombergNEF. When completed, the plant will compete for natural gas with export markets, a confluence analysts say could triple gas prices in parts of the United States.

SB Energy's existing investors include SoftBank and OpenAI. SoftBank had previously held $5.8 billion worth of Nvidia stock, which it sold in November to fund other AI investments. The deal is the latest sign of how AI build-outs are becoming energy deals as much as chip deals — and how the world's largest chipmaker is willing to write enormous checks to keep its silicon at the heart of the next generation of computing.