One Data Center, $105 Billion, Zero Competitors in the Room

Keypoints:

• • Nvidia will provide up to $105 billion in financing for a new OpenAI data center in Ohio
  • The facility will offer 8 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to power a major city
  • Nvidia is separately investing $1.5 billion directly into SB Energy, the site's developer
  • OpenAI committed to using Nvidia chips exclusively at the facility
  • The deal follows Nvidia's $500 billion financing platform launched with major Wall Street firms days earlier

Enough electricity for a major American city, running on hardware from exactly one supplier, financed almost entirely by that same supplier. Read those three facts together and the arrangement starts to look less like a partnership and more like Nvidia buying its own demand.

Nvidia will back up to $105 billion in financing for a massive AI data center in Pike County, Ohio, built and owned by SB Energy and leased to OpenAI for 20 years. The facility starts at 4.25 gigawatts of capacity with room to grow to 8, more power than New York City typically draws on an average day. 

Nvidia is also putting $1.5 billion directly into SB Energy, and in exchange, OpenAI agreed to run the entire site exclusively on Nvidia hardware, a commitment that could eventually mean 1.5 million chips deployed at this one location alone.

The timing is what turns this from a big number into a genuinely interesting story about risk. This deal lands days after Nvidia partnered with BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and Apollo on a separate $500 billion AI infrastructure financing platform, and right after reports that Nvidia had quietly scaled back an earlier $250 billion guarantee for this same Ohio project after investors pushed back on how much exposure the chipmaker was taking on. 

Between this deal and Nvidia's prior commitments, the combined arrangements could eventually total roughly $600 billion. That figure only works if OpenAI's revenue keeps compounding fast enough to cover obligations already reported at around $750 billion over the next four years, meaning Nvidia isn't just selling chips to OpenAI anymore. It's underwriting OpenAI's ability to keep buying them.