Nvidia Commits Up to $105 Billion to Finance OpenAI Ohio Data Center, Adds $1.5 B Investment in SB Energy
Nvidia announced it will provide as much as $105 billion in credit and compute support for a massive OpenAI data center in Ohio, with SB Energy tasked to build and manage the facility. The project, estimated to cost up to $500 billion, will be leased by OpenAI. Additionally, Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion directly in SB Energy to secure the AI infrastructure needed for the campus.
NVDA disclosed in a securities filing that it will backstop as much as $105 billion of financing for an OpenAI data center in Ohio, covering both credit and compute for the first phase of the project . SB Energy will build and operate the campus at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County under a 20-year lease to OpenAI, in what is projected to become one of the largest AI facilities in the world .
The commitment is sized to capacity rather than to a single construction budget. The credit supports an initial 4.25 gigawatts of compute with an option for a further 3.75 gigawatts, and capacity is expected to come online in phases beginning in 2028. Nvidia is separately investing $1.5 billion directly into SB Energy, while SB Energy and SoftBank plan to build power sources supporting roughly 10 gigawatts and to put at least $4.2 billion into regional grid infrastructure .
The structure extends a pattern Nvidia has been building all year: underwriting the balance sheets of the developers and operators who buy its GPUs, so that downstream demand is secured rather than merely forecast. By guaranteeing the campus financing and taking equity in the developer, Nvidia positions itself to capture a large share of the compute spend flowing from OpenAI's next model generation, and to keep a competitor's silicon out of a multi-gigawatt site.
The scale also concentrates risk. A guarantee is a contingent liability, not revenue, and it ties a substantial block of Nvidia's forward capacity to a single counterparty whose own funding is still being assembled. OpenAI says the project could support 35,000 construction jobs through 2032 and 2,500 permanent roles, a footprint large enough that permitting, power procurement and grid interconnection timelines all become material to whether the 2028 phase-in holds.
What to watch: the disclosed terms of the guarantee in Nvidia's filings, whether the option for the additional 3.75 gigawatts is exercised, and any change to the phased 2028 energization schedule. Slippage there would push the associated GPU revenue into later periods without reducing the contingent exposure.
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