Nvidia has agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in lease payments and invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy to support a massive new OpenAI data center campus in Pike County, Ohio. The project will feature an initial 4.25 gigawatts of computing capacity slated to come online in 2028.
The race to secure artificial intelligence infrastructure has reached a staggering new financial scale. Nvidia Corp. has stepped in to back a colossal data center buildout in Ohio, committing to guarantee as much as $105 billion in financing to support credit and compute for the ChatGPT maker, according to financial filings and company announcements made on Monday, August 17, 2026.
The sprawling development is slated for the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike City, Ohio, where SB Energy—backed by SoftBank—will build, own, and operate the facility under a 20-year lease with OpenAI. The deal represents one of the chipmaker’s largest infrastructure financing commitments to date, cementing an aggressive strategy to tie together high-end graphics processing units, dedicated power sources, and massive physical plant developments.
Scale, Capacity, and the Ohio Timeline
Under the terms of the agreement, the campus will support an initial 4.25 gigawatts of computing capacity, with an option to scale up by an additional 3.75 gigawatts, bringing the total potential footprint to roughly 8 gigawatts. Initial operations are scheduled to come online in phases beginning in 2028.
To contextualize the sheer magnitude of power required, a single gigawatt is enough electricity to power up to 750,000 U.S. homes at any given time. Because aging electrical grids, lengthy regulatory approval processes, and scarce land normally constrain such monumental projects, the developer partnership is taking preemptive measures.
SoftBank and SB Energy plan to construct at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation sources and invest $4.2 billion in new regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio. Nvidia itself is directly investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy as part of the transaction.
Strategic Rationale and Industry Stakeholders
The agreement binds together key players who have already forged deep financial ties.
The partnership guarantees that Nvidia will exclusively provide the AI compute infrastructure for the campus. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized the long-term utility of securing dedicated physical locations for advanced silicon.
According to CEO Jensen Huang in a company blog post cited by Reuters, OpenAI’s total spending on Nvidia chips is expected to amount to roughly $600 billion in compute capacity through the year 2030.
Financing Structures and Circular Funding Scrutiny
The massive backstop arrives amid mounting industry discussions concerning circular financing models within the artificial intelligence trade. Prior to the finalization of the Ohio agreement, CNBC previously reported that Nvidia was in discussions to provide a backstop of up to $250 billion, while The Wall Street Journal reported that the chip giant was prepared to adjust that guarantee downward to less than $120 billion.
The deal follows a separate announcement in which Nvidia partnered with six major financial institutions to launch compute financing platforms aimed at securing over $500 billion in third-party funding for data center projects. It also builds upon a previous $1 billion joint investment made by OpenAI and SoftBank in January to back power infrastructure for the Stargate AI initiative.
Regional Economic Impact and Next Milestones
Beyond high-performance computing supply chains, the project promises substantial local economic development across the American Midwest. OpenAI stated that the Pike County data center campus is expected to support 35,000 new construction jobs through 2032, alongside 2,500 long-term operating positions.
Market analysts tracking the partnership note that the arrangement aligns with broader data center project financing trends in regions where power availability and land acquisition costs still favor rapid industrial buildouts. With land acquired, power partnerships established with regional utilities, and credit backing secured, attention turns to the physical groundbreaking and the phased electrical activation leading toward the 2030 development horizon.
