Nvidia is in discussions to provide OpenAI with about $250 billion in financing guarantees for a huge data centre project in southern Ohio.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the guarantee would help OpenAI lease a planned 10-gigawatt data centre campus that SoftBank’s energy subsidiary is developing at the site of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, Ohio.
If completed, the agreement would be OpenAI’s first step towards controlling its own computing infrastructure instead of depending on cloud providers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle.
At the same time, Nvidia would secure demand for its chips for years as companies continually expand their artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The project is expected to cost more than $500 billion, including the Nvidia chips that will power the facility. However, the proposed $250 billion guarantee would cover the data centre lease and debt financing rather than the cost of the chips themselves.
The report also said Nvidia is discussing separate financing for OpenAI’s chip purchases, with those talks covering as much as $350 billion worth of hardware.
The financing guarantees would support investment vehicles designed to reassure lenders that the project has the financial backing needed to move forward.
Construction will take place in phases. The first stage, expected to deliver about 800 megawatts of capacity, is scheduled for completion in 2028.
Power for the facility is being funded separately through Japan’s commitment to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant under a recent US-Japan trade agreement. The Wall Street Journal reported that US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in deciding how that electricity will be allocated.
OpenAI has reportedly spent several weeks in advanced discussions over leasing the site and is one of the strongest contenders. Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also held talks with Lutnick about securing capacity at the location.
For SoftBank, the Ohio development is one of its biggest infrastructure initiatives. The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, described it as “the biggest power generation in one location in the U.S.”
Companies across the technology industry are now investing heavily in dedicated AI infrastructure instead of relying entirely on shared cloud services. Industry spending on AI infrastructure is expected to exceed $700 billion this year as companies raise debt and equity to finance new facilities.
Reuters said it could not independently verify the Wall Street Journal report. Nvidia, OpenAI and the US Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment outside normal business hours.
