Nvidia has agreed to provide residual value guarantees of up to $105 billion to support a sprawling artificial intelligence data centre campus in Ohio that will be leased by OpenAI, the company announced Monday.The facility, known as the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, is being developed by SoftBank’s SB Energy on a former Department of Energy site. OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease for approximately 8 gigawatts of IT computing capacity. The first 800 megawatts are expected to come online in 2028.Nvidia’s commitment covers the initial phase of about 4.25 gigawatts.
The company holds an option to extend support to the remaining roughly 3.75 gigawatts. In addition, Nvidia will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy and serve as the exclusive provider of AI chips and related infrastructure at the site.The structure of the deal is a residual value guarantee rather than a direct promise to cover OpenAI’s rent. If OpenAI defaults on its lease payments or becomes insolvent, SB Energy must first attempt to find a replacement tenant or sell the facilities.
Nvidia would then cover any shortfall between a pre-agreed minimum value and the amount recovered, with its total exposure capped at $105 billion.Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said the arrangement helps secure long-lived infrastructure for Nvidia compute so OpenAI can deploy productive AI factories that can be upgraded with each new generation of chips.
OpenAI will only begin paying for capacity as completed portions of the campus become available.The project is one of the largest single AI infrastructure developments disclosed to date. SoftBank and SB Energy plan significant new power generation and grid upgrades in the region, including partnerships aimed at limiting costs for local ratepayers.
The campus is expected to generate tens of thousands of construction jobs through the early 2030s and several thousand permanent operating positions.The deal illustrates how Nvidia has expanded beyond selling chips into helping finance the physical infrastructure that runs them. Demand for AI computing power has outstripped available supply, prompting labs, cloud providers and chipmakers to lock in multi-gigawatt capacity years in advance.
Nvidia previously invested heavily in OpenAI and has assembled other large financing packages with Wall Street partners to support data centre construction.OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has been racing to secure long-term computing resources to train and run increasingly powerful models. The Ohio campus will run exclusively on Nvidia’s full AI stack, including its graphics processing units, networking and software platforms.Details of the exact power mix, final construction costs and community benefit funds continue to emerge.
An initial $80 million community benefits fund has been referenced as part of the project’s local commitments. Regulatory filings and company statements confirm the core financial terms of the residual value guarantees and the equity investment in SB Energy.The arrangement has drawn attention for its scale and for the close financial ties it creates between the leading AI chip supplier and one of its largest customers.
Nvidia has stressed that OpenAI remains responsible for lease payments and that the guarantee activates only under specific default or insolvency conditions.As AI models grow more demanding, deals of this magnitude are expected to become more common. The Ohio project positions Nvidia, OpenAI and SoftBank at the centre of one of the most ambitious build-outs in the industry’s history.
