Nvidia backing OpenAI's 10GW Ohio megacampus with $250 billion financing guarantee; deal also includes potential $350 billion in chip financing for the site.
OpenAI is in advanced talks to lease SB Energy's 1 GW data center campus in Piketon, Ohio, with Nvidia reportedly in discussions to guarantee roughly $250 billion of the financing behind the project. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the facility would mark OpenAI's first major data center as a tenant rather than as a customer of Microsoft, Amazon, or Oracle.
Separately, Nvidia is also discussing financing the AI accelerators that would power the facility, a commitment that could amount to another $350 billion. However, the terms of the deal have not been finalized, and the arrangement could still fall through.
OpenAI's lack of a credit rating has reportedly made Nvidia's involvement crucial, as it would allow SB Energy to raise debt against Nvidia's balance sheet instead of relying on its tenant. Nvidia has already committed around $30 billion to OpenAI, which has increased its projected compute spending to roughly $750 billion through 2030, up from about $600 billion earlier this year.
Power allocations for the site are reportedly under the purview of US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Nvidia's latest regulatory filing caps its total exposure from partner facility lease guarantees at $3.5 billion, backed by $712 million in escrow. Its previously disclosed guarantee was capped at $860 million. By comparison, a proposed $250 billion guarantee would be unprecedented—around 71 times Nvidia's disclosed guarantee exposure, exceeding the company's annual revenue and nearly four times its cash reserves at the end of fiscal 2026.
The Piketon site was previously used to enrich uranium for the US weapons program between 1954 and 2001 and is still undergoing decontamination. The Department of Energy later identified it as one of 16 federal sites available for data center construction, with SB Energy leasing the land rather than owning it.
Powering the campus is expected to require 9.2 GW of new natural gas generation, along with $4.2 billion in transmission upgrades with AEP Ohio. The project is expected to be funded through the $33.3 billion Japan committed under its trade agreement with the US. The first phase, providing approximately 800 MW of capacity, is expected to come online in 2028.
SoftBank currently carries more than $130 billion in debt while funding infrastructure projects in Ohio, France, and other locations. OpenAI abandoned plans to build its own data centers last year in favor of leasing computing capacity.