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Nvidia guarantees $105 billion for OpenAI's Ohio campus and takes $1.5 billion stake in SB Energy

· by Pondero Newsdesk

The short version

Nvidia on August 17 committed to back up to $105 billion in construction financing for the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, and invested $1.5 billion in SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed developer building the facility, securing exclusive chip supply rights.

Nvidia guarantees $105 billion for OpenAI's Ohio campus and takes $1.5 billion stake in SB Energy

Nvidia on August 17 guaranteed up to $105 billion in construction financing for a single data center campus, taking on a new role as infrastructure financier for a frontier AI lab's buildout. The facility is the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, which OpenAI will occupy on a 20-year lease. Alongside the guarantee, Nvidia took a $1.5 billion equity stake in SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed company building and operating the campus, and locked in exclusive rights to supply all compute at the site.

What happened

SB Energy will build, own, and operate the PORTS-Pike campus on the grounds of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a uranium enrichment facility that ran from 1954 to 2001, per WOSU Public Media. The $1.5 billion from Nvidia is equity in SB Energy. The $105 billion is a construction financing guarantee Nvidia extended to cover the campus buildout, per Nvidia's August 17 newsroom release. Nvidia filed a Form 8-K with the SEC on August 17 disclosing the equity stake, per the same release.

The campus will deliver an initial 4.25 gigawatts of IT capacity, with an option for 3.75 more gigawatts, reaching 8 gigawatts in total potential, per the Nvidia release. Capacity phases begin coming online in 2028. SB Energy and SoftBank also committed to build at least 10 gigawatts of new energy generation and invest $4.2 billion in regional grid infrastructure through AEP Ohio, per the same release. A 9.2 gigawatt natural gas power plant is planned to serve the campus, per TechCrunch.

OpenAI agreed to contribute $40 million to SB Energy's existing community benefits fund, bringing the total to $120 million, per Nvidia's newsroom. The fund is directed at affordable energy, job creation, and local economic development in Pike County. WOSU reports the project connects to a $550 billion US-Japan trade framework that structured SoftBank's US infrastructure commitments.

Why it matters

Nvidia has historically generated revenue by selling chips at point of delivery. Guaranteeing up to $105 billion in construction financing for an exclusive-use campus is a different act: the company is extending balance-sheet exposure to ensure the facility gets built and continues to run its hardware. The exclusivity clause shuts out AMD, Google TPUs, and AWS Trainium for the campus's planned operating life.

For teams building on OpenAI's API, the structural implication is concrete. The PORTS-Pike campus is planned to be OpenAI's largest owned data center. That infrastructure will run a single chip vendor. At 4.25 gigawatts initial IT capacity, it would rank among the largest single-site AI deployments on record. API availability and inference pricing for OpenAI's services at scale will increasingly flow through this campus and its Nvidia supply chain.

The financing model also introduces a risk profile Nvidia has not carried before. Natural gas power plant construction costs rose 66% over the past two years, and export competition could push gas prices significantly higher in some regions, per TechCrunch. SB Energy's $4.2 billion grid investment and the 9.2 gigawatt natural gas plant sit inside the cost structure underpinning Nvidia's guarantee.

Context and reactions

Jensen Huang described the deal in infrastructure terms: "AI is becoming infrastructure, the foundation for intelligence in every industry," per Nvidia's newsroom. Sam Altman cited the regional history: "We're proud to build it in Pike County, a place that is once again at the heart of American industry," per the same release.

Pike County's economy was built around the Portsmouth plant's uranium enrichment work for decades before the facility closed in 2001. The project promises approximately 35,000 construction jobs and around 2,500 permanent positions for facility operations, per WOSU. Those numbers give the announcement political resonance in a region that lost its anchor industrial employer a generation ago.

SoftBank sold $5.8 billion in Nvidia stock in November 2025, per TechCrunch. The Ohio deal creates a new structural tie between SoftBank and Nvidia through SB Energy, replacing that equity position with a shared infrastructure commitment.

What to watch next

Three questions shape the outlook. Whether US or EU antitrust authorities scrutinize Nvidia's combined role as dominant chip supplier and exclusive construction financier for a leading frontier lab's largest facility is the first. Nvidia already faces market-power questions in AI compute; the PORTS-Pike deal adds a financing dimension without clear precedent. Second, whether AMD, Google, or another chip vendor responds with a competing exclusive-campus offer to a different frontier lab, testing whether this model is replicable. Third, whether the 2028 phase-one capacity milestone holds, given rising natural gas plant construction costs and the scale of the AEP Ohio grid work required before the first tranche comes online.

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