NVIDIA backs $105 billion Ohio AI campus leased by OpenAI

NVIDIA is guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease obligations to lock in an 8-gigawatt AI data center campus in Ohio, making the chipmaker the financial backstop for one of the largest single compute buildouts yet disclosed.

"AI is becoming infrastructure — the foundation for intelligence in every industry — and land, power and shell have become vital in the age of AI," Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said. "We are securing long-lived infrastructure for NVIDIA compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories."

The structure, filed with the SEC on Aug. 17, anchors a partnership with SoftBank-owned developer SB Energy at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County. NVIDIA entered residual value guaranties covering leases for about 4.25 gigawatts of IT load, with an option to extend credit support to roughly 3.8 additional gigawatts. OpenAI signed on as tenant under a 20-year lease. NVIDIA's cumulative payment obligation is capped at $105 billion, and payments kick in only if OpenAI defaults or becomes insolvent. NVIDIA is also investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy, joining existing investors SoftBank Group and OpenAI.

The deal inverts NVIDIA's usual position. Rather than selling GPUs into someone else's balance sheet, it now stands behind the shell, power and land those GPUs will occupy, with the exclusivity clause ensuring the 8 gigawatts get filled with its own DSX platform. Capacity comes online in phases beginning 2028.

What the guarantee actually commits

The mechanism is a residual value guaranty, not a loan. NVIDIA does not pay rent; it stands behind the value of the leases themselves. If a trigger event occurs, NVIDIA can assume the lease, require SB Energy to relet the premises, initiate a sale, or defer for up to a year while covering project costs. The obligations fall away if OpenAI achieves a satisfactory credit rating or at the 20th anniversary of each lease's commencement, and OpenAI has agreed to reimburse NVIDIA for any amounts paid out.

The $1.5 billion equity check is separate from, and smaller than, what was on the table days ago. Reuters reported on Aug. 15 that NVIDIA had weighed an investment of as much as $3 billion and roughly $100 billion in credit support, after earlier discussions of a guarantee as large as $250 billion were scaled back.

A nuclear site repowered for compute

The campus is a reindustrialization of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a Cold War-era uranium enrichment site spanning private and federal land leased from the Department of Energy. SB Energy and AEP Ohio are investing $4.2 billion in new transmission infrastructure, including 765-kilovolt lines and four substations, funded by the project rather than ratepayers. SoftBank and SB Energy plan at least 10 gigawatts of new energy generation, including 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas. OpenAI has added $40 million to SB Energy's previously announced $40 million community benefits fund, targeting affordable energy, workforce development and local economic programs.

The Ohio campus is the latest piece of OpenAI's infrastructure acquisition run, which includes a seven-year, $38 billion cloud partnership with AWS signed in November 2025 and a scrapped Stargate expansion in Texas with Oracle.

For NVIDIA, the deal locks in a site where each generation of systems could represent about 1.5 million GPUs, or $150 billion to $200 billion in revenue. OpenAI has committed to roughly 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA compute through 2030, expandable to about 16 gigawatts — an opportunity worth roughly $600 billion. The first concrete test arrives with NVIDIA's quarterly report for the period ended July 26, which will carry the full text of the guaranty agreements, followed by the first ready-for-service milestones expected in 2028.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.