Nvidia in Talks to Back $250B Financing for OpenAI Data Center Campus

NVDA is in talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion of debt so OpenAI can lease a 10-gigawatt data center campus in southern Ohio. The structure matters more than the headline number: OpenAI does not carry an investment-grade credit rating, so Nvidia's balance sheet would effectively stand in for one, letting lenders price the paper against the chipmaker's credit rather than the borrower's. Reports describe a separate arrangement of roughly $350 billion tied to the chips that would fill the site.

The campus itself is being developed by SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary, on a decommissioned uranium enrichment site about 50 miles south of Columbus. A first phase of roughly 800 megawatts is targeted for 2028, with the fully built-out project potentially exceeding $500 billion once silicon is included. Talks are not final and no terms have been agreed, so the deal could shrink or fall away entirely.

For investors the question is what a vendor-financing guarantee of this scale does to the quality of Nvidia's demand. Backstopping a customer's lease converts what looks like an arm's-length order book into an exposure that sits off the income statement until something goes wrong, and it is the mechanism bears have pointed to in arguing that AI infrastructure demand is partly self-funded. Analysts also note that data center buildouts of this size ripple into local power, construction and durable goods markets well beyond the two companies involved. Watch for confirmation of the guarantee's structure and for any disclosure of contingent liabilities in Nvidia's next filing.

Related Stocks

• NVDA