Nvidia Weighs $250B Backstop for Ohio Data Center

Nvidia is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of a massive data center project in southern Ohio, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The guarantees would help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt campus in Pike County that SoftBank's energy subsidiary is developing. The full project, including the chips inside it, is expected to cost more than $500 billion.

Nothing is signed. This is a reported negotiation — Nvidia, OpenAI and the Commerce Department did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the report.

What a Nvidia "Guarantee" Means

Nvidia would not be writing OpenAI a $250 billion check. A guarantee is a backstop: Nvidia's credit standing behind someone else's lease or loan, so lenders and landlords accept a customer they might otherwise consider too risky.

That matters here because OpenAI, valued at $852 billion, is one of the most valuable private companies in the world — and still unprofitable, which raises questions about its ability to fund the multibillion-dollar infrastructure commitments it has already signed.

For OpenAI, a deal would be its first real step toward controlling its own infrastructure instead of renting from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. For Nvidia, it locks in demand for its chips for years.

It fits a pattern Nvidia set out publicly this week. The company said Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR are willing to commit up to $500 billion to build AI data centers — and Nvidia agreed to guarantee, with its own money, that chips used as loan collateral hold their value, covering up to 25% of any shortfall if a borrower defaults and the GPUs sell for less than the books say, TechCrunch reported.

Who Controls the Power

The electricity for the Ohio project is controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick involved in deciding who gets access, the Journal reported.

OpenAI has been in advanced talks for several weeks to lease the site and is among the companies showing the strongest interest. Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken to Lutnick in recent weeks. Lutnick has previously told the Columbus Dispatch he is confident the project moves forward, citing the job creation expected for the region.