Nvidia to Invest Up to $105 Billion for Massive OpenAI Data Center in Ohio

The Deal

Nvidia Corp. has agreed to spend as much as $105 billion to support a massive new data center campus in Ohio set to be leased by OpenAI, marking the latest tie-up between two dominant forces driving the AI boom. Nvidia, OpenAI, and SB Energy are teaming up to build a massive 8-gigawatt data center facility in Ohio, with Nvidia providing more than $105 billion in financing to secure land, power, and a shell for the site, with initial plans calling for 4.25 gigawatts of computing capacity and the option to increase by another 3.75 gigawatts.

Infrastructure and Timeline

The ChatGPT maker has entered into an agreement to secure up to roughly 8 gigawatts of computing capacity from the Pike County complex, with the first 800 megawatts expected to come online by 2028. SB Energy will ultimately build and own the site, known as the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, which OpenAI will then lease for 20 years, and Nvidia is making a $1.5 billion investment in SB Energy as part of the arrangement. The complex will exclusively use Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), which the company said could amount to some 1.5 million chips, or roughly $150 billion to $200 billion in potential revenue per generation deployed at the site through 2030.

Strategic Partnership Framework

OpenAI and Nvidia announced a letter of intent for a landmark strategic partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems for OpenAI's next-generation AI infrastructure to train and run its next generation of models on the path to deploying superintelligence, with Nvidia intending to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as the new Nvidia systems are deployed. OpenAI's broader infrastructure plans could represent roughly $600 billion in Nvidia compute through 2030.

Financial Dynamics

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated that OpenAI will pay the lease and that OpenAI's broader infrastructure plans could represent roughly $600 billion in Nvidia compute through 2030. Huang also noted that frontier AI labs are "growing faster than their balance sheets and long-term credit profiles can support." This represents Nvidia's escalating role not just as a hardware supplier but as a financial architect of AI infrastructure.