Nvidia behind $50bn lease on Texas data centre that will use its chips

Nvidia has signed leases worth up to $50bn for a massive Texas data centre, a previously undisclosed commitment that shines a new spotlight on the chip group’s growing role in financing AI.

The nearly $5tn company is leasing the entire 1 gigawatt facility that developer Hut 8 is building, which will house hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s graphics processing units, said five people familiar with the deal.

The move is the latest example of Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang aggressively using the company’s financial strength to keep it at the centre of the fast-growing market for AI computing power.

These efforts have included spending billions of dollars to foster a new generation of AI infrastructure providers, such as CoreWeave, to buy and run its GPUs. The Texas lease goes further, putting Nvidia behind the facilities that will house its chips.

The Texas site has secured access to electricity, something that is increasingly rare as developers compete for grid power. Nvidia wielded its financial muscle to lock in the site for its own chips, said an executive familiar with the deal.

“They have the balance sheet to acquire power, and in doing so, ensure their product is deployed,” the person said, asking not to be named.

Once completed, Nvidia could sublease capacity to its “neocloud” partners that buy its GPUs and sell AI cloud computing, the person said.

Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang. When a Big Tech group guarantees data centre leases, the cost of financing roughly halves, bankers say © Manami Yamada/Reuters

The arrangement will intensify concerns about circular financing, as the chip group underwrites more of the market for its chips.

Nvidia is also in talks to provide a $250bn backstop to OpenAI to help it lease a 10GW data centre SoftBank is building in Ohio, according to people familiar with the move. Details of Nvidia’s involvement in the Ohio project were first reported by The Information and The Wall Street Journal.

Nvidia’s 15-year lease…