Nvidia is in early talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion in lease and debt financing for OpenAI’s forthcoming Ohio data center campus, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that Bloomberg, Reuters and CNBC quickly confirmed in outline. The structure would make the chipmaker something it has spent two years trying not to be labeled: a de facto lender to its single largest customer.
The site itself, being built by SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy in southern Ohio, is planned for 10 gigawatts at full build, roughly the annual electricity draw of 8 million U.S. households by Energy Information Administration reckoning. The first phase, about 800 megawatts, is expected online in 2028. Total project cost is projected above $500 billion once chips are included, and Nvidia is separately discussing up to $350 billion in financing for OpenAI’s silicon purchases from the same facility. Japan’s government has pledged $33 billion toward a natural gas plant on site, a piece Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has folded into a broader trade arrangement.
The guarantee, per people familiar with the talks, would cover lease and debt obligations but not the Nvidia hardware itself. Terms aren’t final. The deal could still collapse.
Credit markets responded before equity did. Credit default swaps on Nvidia bonds posted their sharpest intraday move since they began actively trading in November, per ICE Data Services. Nvidia shares fell about 4.5% in late morning trading. The concern isn’t the buildout itself, which every hyperscaler from Microsoft to Google to Amazon to Oracle is racing to match. It’s the shape of the money.
“While Nvidia’s investments and partnerships reinforce confidence in long-term AI buildouts, investors remain concerned about circular financing,” said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments.
Circular is the operative word. Nvidia has already put $30 billion into OpenAI directly. OpenAI, valued by private investors at close to $1 trillion, has raised its 2030 infrastructure projection from roughly $600 billion earlier this year to roughly $750 billion, on top of $20 billion committed to a wholly owned campus in Effingham County, Georgia. Total AI infrastructure spending will clear $700 billion in 2026 alone. The supplier is now underwriting the customer’s ability to buy from the supplier, a structure the 2000 telecom vendor-financing episode made infamous when Lucent and Nortel guaranteed the debt of carriers that then couldn’t pay.
The optics got sharper on Monday, when Nvidia announced a separate investment and partnership with Safe Superintelligence, Ilya Sutskever’s OpenAI-alumni lab. Backing the incumbent, backing the schismatic, backing the buildout that lets both exist. The Ohio guarantee isn’t a bet on OpenAI. It’s a bet that any counterparty who defaults still leaves the GPUs racked and drawing power somewhere Nvidia can sell to.