Nvidia pledges $100bn backing for OpenAI data centre in Ohio

Nvidia has agreed to provide a more than $100bn backstop for a huge new OpenAI data centre in Ohio that is being developed alongside a SoftBank-led energy company, in one of the biggest AI infrastructure deals yet.

The AI chipmaker will also invest $1.5bn into SB Energy, an energy company founded as part of the SoftBank Group in 2019 that has recently focused on data centre development after striking a $1bn alliance with OpenAI in January.

The deal is the latest example of how Big Tech companies including Nvidia, Google and Amazon are using their balance sheets to strike alliances with OpenAI and Anthropic, betting hundreds of billions of dollars that demand for AI services will continue to surge in the coming years.

OpenAI plans to lease as much as 8 gigawatts of AI computing power at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, which will take until 2032 to complete. The ChatGPT maker said the first 800 megawatts is expected to come online in 2028, as it races to secure new computing power to fuel its growth. SB Energy will build, own and operate the data centre, with OpenAI taking a 20-year lease to become its main customer.

“We expect to use this capacity to meet growing demand for advanced AI and maintain our lead as the frontier AI research laboratory in pursuit of our mission,” OpenAI said, adding that the Ohio project would help to “establish the data centre as a model for future next-gen supercomputer design”.

Nvidia will provide credit support for the “land, power and shell” for the facility capped at $105bn, it said in a regulatory filing, backstopping the development of the property, energy and warehouses that will ultimately house more than 1mn of its AI chips. One condition of Nvidia’s obligation is that the Ohio facility will be ready to begin operating in 2028.

Recommended

The deal comes after last week’s landmark $500bn agreement between Nvidia and a consortium of Wall Street firms to fuel AI infrastructure development.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, denied that the latest arrangement with OpenAI and SB Energy amounted to “circular financing”. He argued in a blog post on Monday that the world’s most valuable company was using its “scale and long-term visibility” to facilitate the build-out.

“LPS [land, power and shell] has become a critical constraint on AI factory deployment,” Huang said. “Nvidia is selectively securing exceptional sites where we can host multiple generations of Nvidia compute and serve durable customer demand.”

Nvidia stands to generate $150bn to $200bn in revenue from the site, he said, as the exclusive supplier of the computing systems that will underpin what could eventually become one of the world’s largest AI data centres. OpenAI’s spending on Nvidia chips could reach as much as $600bn by 2030 if the company extends the Ohio project beyond its initial 4.25GW commitment.