Nvidia Guarantees $105 Billion in Credit for OpenAI's Ohio Data Center

Nvidia spent Monday doing something chipmakers do not normally do: it co-signed a data center.

In a current report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 17, Nvidia disclosed that it has agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in conditional lease and power payment obligations owed to SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed developer building an 8 IT-gigawatt AI campus in Pike County, Ohio. OpenAI is the tenant, signed to a 20-year lease. Nvidia is the exclusive compute provider. And Nvidia is also now an equity holder in the landlord, having committed $1.5 billion to SB Energy alongside existing investors SoftBank Group and OpenAI.

The Information reported over the weekend that Nvidia was nearing an agreement to backstop roughly $100 billion in credit for OpenAI's next data center, and that it was separately negotiating an investment of as much as $3 billion in SB Energy — half at signing, half into SB Energy's planned IPO. Monday's filing confirmed the shape of the deal, with the guarantee landing slightly above the reported figure and the first equity tranche coming in at $1.5 billion.

What Was Actually Signed

The site is the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a Cold War-era uranium enrichment complex spanning private and federal land, now rebranded the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus. Nvidia's credit support covers the "land, power and shell" buildout for an initial 4.25 IT-gigawatts, with an option to take the remaining 3.75 IT-gigawatts. SB Energy will build, own and operate the facility; OpenAI will fill it with Nvidia's DSX AI factory platform.

The power math is the part that has utility regulators paying attention. SB Energy and SoftBank have committed to building at least 10 gigawatts of new generation to yield those 8 IT-gigawatts of usable capacity, plus at least $4.2 billion in regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio structured to shield existing ratepayers. Axios reported that 9.2 gigawatts of new gas-fired power is ultimately envisioned for the project, which U.S. officials have said Japan is helping fund under the 2025 trade and investment deal. OpenAI doubled SB Energy's community benefits fund to $80 million. The companies project 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent operating roles, with first capacity online in phases beginning in 2028.

The number that landed is also notably smaller than the one that leaked. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Nvidia had trimmed its backstop for the Ohio project from a previously discussed $250 billion to under $120 billion, narrowing the guarantee to the buildout's first phase after Nvidia shares fell roughly 5% when the larger figure first surfaced. The GPU financing pipeline behind the project — reportedly running to hundreds of billions — was left intact.

The Circularity Problem, Restated

Jensen Huang did not wait for the criticism. Nvidia's founder and CEO framed the arrangement in the announcement as infrastructure strategy rather than customer financing: "We are securing long-lived infrastructure for NVIDIA compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories that can be upgraded repeatedly with each new generation delivering more intelligence and better economics."

Then he addressed the accusation head-on. Writing on X, Huang said: "Is this circular financing? No. OpenAI will pay the lease," adding that Nvidia is applying its scale and long-term visibility to make the site possible.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kept to the ribbon-cutting register. "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," he said.

Wall Street has been less lyrical. Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote of Nvidia's earlier OpenAI commitment that the move would "clearly fuel 'circular' concerns." Seaport Global's Jay Goldberg, one of the few analysts carrying a sell rating on the stock, has put it more bluntly: "It's kind of like having your parents co-sign on your first mortgage."

Why It Matters

Strip out the gigawatts and the deal is a statement about who is underwriting AI's capital stack. Nvidia is not lending OpenAI money to buy chips — the distinction Huang keeps pressing — but it is guaranteeing the lease and power payments that make the building exist, on a site that will exclusively host its own hardware. If OpenAI's revenue underdelivers, Nvidia's contingent liability converts into a real one.

That exposure sits on an unusually strong balance sheet. Nvidia carries a market capitalization around $5.5 trillion, roughly $253.5 billion in trailing revenue, and a debt-to-equity ratio near 0.07 — meaning it is funding this ecosystem largely from cash on hand rather than borrowings. The company one layer downstream is not comparable: OpenAI remains unprofitable.

The systemic worry is aggregation, not any single deal. Nikkei tallied roughly $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations across the five largest hyperscalers in July; the Journal has since put the broader figure closer to $3 trillion. A week before the Ohio announcement, Nvidia unveiled financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital for AI compute. Both the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements have flagged AI circular financing as a systemic downside risk. Every one of these structures rests on the same unverified premise: that AI revenue keeps compounding fast enough to cover lease payments written today against tokens sold in 2029.

What to Watch

Three tells over the next quarter. First, SB Energy's IPO — reportedly targeted as soon as next month at a raise of at least $5 billion — which is where Nvidia's second equity tranche is expected to land, putting Nvidia, OpenAI and SoftBank together on a newly public company's cap table. Second, Nvidia's Q2 disclosure of how the $105 billion guarantee is accounted for and whether auditors treat it as a contingent liability requiring recognition. Third, whether Nvidia exercises its option on the remaining 3.75 IT-gigawatts, which would be the clearest signal that management believes the demand curve justifies doubling the bet.