Nvidia in advanced talks to guarantee $250-500 billion financing for OpenAI's Ohio data center deployment

Nvidia is negotiating to financially support OpenAI's 20-year lease of a massive data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, a project with construction costs projected to exceed $500 billion. The facility is part of OpenAI's Stargate initiative and will deliver 10 gigawatts of total capacity when fully built out. The first phase alone targets 800 megawatts, with completion scheduled for 2028.

The Ohio campus is designed as a vertically integrated AI factory, incorporating 9.2 gigawatts of on-site natural gas power generation through a partnership involving SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary, and assistance from the US Department of Energy. The project represents one of the largest single integration efforts in AI infrastructure history.

Nvidia's involvement extends beyond supplying GPUs for the facility. The company is being asked to put real capital behind the lease itself, sharing the financial risk of a facility that won't be fully operational for years. This builds on a partnership Nvidia announced in September 2025, when the chipmaker committed up to $100 billion to support the deployment of at least 10 gigawatts of hardware configurations for AI infrastructure. The Ohio deal appears to be a concrete manifestation of that broader commitment.

If chip manufacturers routinely start backing infrastructure leases, the financing structure could reshape how capital flows through the technology sector. The 2028 timeline for the first phase means investors have roughly two years before any capacity comes online. Between now and then, the project will need to navigate permitting, construction, power interconnection, and the regulatory scrutiny that a $500 billion energy-intensive facility will attract in rural Appalachia.