OpenAI Seeks $250 Billion NVIDIA Guarantee For Ohio Data Center

NVIDIA is reportedly in negotiations to provide in the neighborhood of $250 billion in financial guarantees to help OpenAI secure a 10-gigawatt AI data center campus in southern Ohio. Expanding on OpenAI's $100 billion partnership to power AI superintelligence, if finalized, it would rank as the biggest data center project announced so far.

First reported by The Wall Street Journal, the proposed arrangement signals a major shift in how AI infrastructure could be funded in the future. Rather than serving solely as a silicon vendor, NVIDIA would effectively use its strong balance sheet as a financial pillar to underwrite OpenAI's long-term lease and construction commitments.

The overall footprint of the project is anticipated to cost north of $500 billion. It's planned for the site of a former uranium-enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio, building directly on SoftBank's expanding AI infrastructure footprint in the state through its energy subsidiary, SB Energy. In addition to the $250 billion real estate and lease backstop, NVIDIA is reportedly discussing a separate financing package worth approximately $350 billion to fund OpenAI's chip purchases.

For OpenAI, controlling a dedicated 10-gigawatt site represents a crucial step toward owning its physical infrastructure rather than relying entirely on rented capacity from cloud hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is actively overseeing power allocation for the federal site, with competing AI firms such as Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft also vying for access to the region's energy allocation.

The potential appeal for NVIDIA acting as a financial guarantor is that it ensures a multi-year customer commitment for hundreds of thousands of next-generation GPUs. Of course, NVIDIA is selling every GPU it can muster, and one could argue that OpenAI needs NVIDIA more than the other way around.