Nvidia Backs OpenAI's Ohio Mega Data Center With Up to $105 Billion in Guarantees

The largest AI infrastructure financing deal to date just landed in Pike County, Ohio. On August 17, 2026, Nvidia disclosed in a securities filing that it will provide up to $105 billion in guarantees — combining credit support and compute commitments — to anchor a sprawling new AI data center campus that OpenAI will occupy under a 20-year lease. SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed infrastructure developer, will build, own, and operate the facility.

The announcement settles months of speculation. In late July, The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia was in talks to backstop roughly $250 billion in financing for a 10-gigawatt version of the project. Last week, Reuters and the Journal reported the guarantee had been scaled back to under $120 billion. The final structure, revealed Monday, lands at $105 billion — smaller than first discussed, but still the single largest financial commitment any chipmaker has ever made to a single customer relationship.

What the deal actually contains

The PORTS-Pike Technology Campus is a “power-first” development on and around the site of the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Appalachian Ohio — a Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility now being reindustrialized as AI infrastructure. The project spans private and federal land, developed in collaboration with AEP Ohio, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The core numbers, per Nvidia’s press release and the securities filing:

• 8 IT-GW of total AI factory capacity. The initial deployment supports 4.25 gigawatts of IT capacity, with Nvidia holding an option on the remaining 3.75 gigawatts.
• 20-year lease. OpenAI is the anchor customer for the full 8 gigawatts. SB Energy builds, owns, and operates the data center; OpenAI rents.
• $105 billion in guarantees. Nvidia provides credit support on the land, power, and shell buildout (“LPS” in Nvidia’s framing) plus compute commitments, coming online in phases beginning in 2028.
• $1.5 billion equity investment. Nvidia is investing directly in SB Energy, joining SoftBank Group and OpenAI as existing investors in the company.
• Full-stack Nvidia platform. The site will exclusively host Nvidia compute — GPUs, CPUs, and networking built on Nvidia’s DSX AI factory architecture. No competitor silicon will run at PORTS-Pike.

“This is going to be a huge site, with enough computing power to help millions of people use AI to do things we can only start to imagine today, from finding new medicines to starting businesses and solving hard problems,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

Jensen Huang framed the deal in civilizational terms: “AI is becoming infrastructure — the foundation for intelligence in every industry — and land, power and shell have become vital in the age of AI. Now is the time to scale the AI infrastructure that will power the next industrial revolution.”

Why the guarantee matters more than the gigawatts

The headline number is the guarantee, not the capacity. To understand why, look at how the financing closes a loop that has defined AI capital expenditure for two years.

OpenAI needs tens of gigawatts of compute to keep pace with rivals, but it doesn’t have the balance sheet to fund the buildout alone — the company reportedly burns billions per quarter. Data center developers like SB Energy can raise debt, but lenders want certainty that the facility will generate revenue for decades. Nvidia’s guarantee bridges that gap: the chipmaker effectively co-signs the loan, converting its customer’s promise to buy compute into bankable credit.

The circularity concern is obvious. Nvidia sells GPUs to OpenAI, invests in OpenAI (a commitment of up to $100 billion announced in September 2025), invests in SB Energy, and now guarantees the debt on the building that houses the GPUs it sells. Asked directly about this, Huang said the deal was not circular financing and that Nvidia is using “its scale and long-term visibility” to help. Skeptics note that vendor-backed financing of this kind concentrates risk: if AI revenue growth ever disappoints, the losses ripple through the chipmaker, the lab, the developer, and the lenders simultaneously.

There’s also a competitive-lock-in function. By making PORTS-Pike exclusively Nvidia silicon, the guarantee doesn’t just finance a building — it locks 8 gigawatts of future capacity away from AMD, Google’s TPU program, and custom accelerators for the next two decades.

The Ohio angle

The community package is notable because it addresses the main political friction point for hyperscale AI buildouts: local power costs. SB Energy and SoftBank will build at least 10 GW of new energy generation, and invest a minimum of $4.2 billion in regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio explicitly designed to protect ratepayers.

On jobs and community investment, OpenAI agreed to double SB Energy’s originally announced $40 million community benefits fund with an incremental $40 million — $80 million total — targeting affordable energy, workforce development, and local economic development. Nvidia says the campus will create “tens of thousands” of Ohio jobs.

What to watch

Three things determine whether this deal ages well. First, phase-one delivery: capacity is slated to come online in phases beginning 2028, and gigawatt-scale projects routinely slip. Second, whether Nvidia exercises its 3.75 GW option — a signal of actual demand at OpenAI rather than committed optimism. Third, how the “circular financing” debate resolves as more vendor-guaranteed deals stack up across the industry; Nvidia has struck similar structures elsewhere, and regulators and credit markets are watching the aggregate exposure.

For now, the deal confirms the shape of the AI buildout’s next phase: chipmakers are no longer just suppliers — they are the industry’s de facto financiers, using their balance sheets to manufacture demand for their own products. Appalachian Ohio, once the heart of the uranium complex that powered the Cold War, is betting it can power the intelligence economy next.

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Figures per Nvidia’s August 17, 2026 press release, OpenAI’s announcement, and contemporaneous CNBC and Reuters reporting.