NVIDIA will provide up to $105 billion in financing for a new AI data center for OpenAI in Pike City, Ohio, with SB Energy building and managing the facility. The credit will support an initial 4.25 gigawatts of computing capacity with an option for an additional 3.75 gigawatts, with capacity expected to come online in phases starting in 2028. NVIDIA will also invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, while SoftBank will invest at least $4.2 billion into regional grid infrastructure to support 10 gigawatts of total energy.
This represents NVIDIA's latest major financing move in the sprawling AI data center buildout. CNBC previously reported NVIDIA was in discussions with OpenAI to provide a backstop of up to $250 billion, but last week's Wall Street Journal reported NVIDIA was cutting that guarantee to less than $120 billion—the $105 billion deal now revealed falls in that range. OpenAI said the new data center will support 35,000 new construction jobs through 2032 and 2,500 long-term positions.
NVIDIA is pursuing a broader strategy to finance AI infrastructure. Last week, NVIDIA joined forces with six large asset managers to build financing platforms designed to deploy $500 billion in third-party capital for datacenter projects. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told CNBC that compute has become "the new oil, the new limited resource of the AI age"—this Ohio deal underscores how hardware suppliers are evolving into infrastructure financiers to secure demand for their chips and ensure deployment of massive capacity.