NVIDIA weighs backing OpenAI’s 10-gigawatt Ohio data center

NVIDIA is in talks to provide financing guarantees for OpenAI’s planned data center campus in southern Ohio, according to the Wall Street Journal as cited by Reuters. The project, developed by SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy, is described as a 10-gigawatt facility on a decommissioned uranium-enrichment site about 50 miles south of Columbus, Ohio.

The financing structure would have NVIDIA backstop lending instruments meant to reassure investors, partly because OpenAI has not turned a profit and cannot qualify for investment-grade credit on its own. NVIDIA is also reportedly discussing support for OpenAI’s chip purchases, following a prior OpenAI and NVIDIA partnership to deploy 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA systems.

For OpenAI, the campus would be its first directly leased data center and could reduce reliance on Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle for cloud infrastructure. Power for the site is controlled by the U.S. government, with allocation overseen by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has been contacted by OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google about the location.

The first phase is expected to be completed in 2028 at around 800 megawatts. Terms remain unfinished, and the deal could still be abandoned.