Nvidia is prepared to backstop nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in debt just to get OpenAI a data center. According to the Wall Street Journal, the chipmaker is negotiating a roughly $250 billion financial guarantee that would let OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt campus in Ohio being built by SB Energy, SoftBank's power subsidiary.
The site itself has history: a decommissioned uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon, about 50 miles south of Columbus. The land is federally controlled, and the power supply is being funded separately by Japan under a recent trade agreement. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright broke ground on the project back in March.
The arrangement is straightforward and risky at once. OpenAI isn't profitable yet and holds no investment-grade credit rating, so no bank would lend against its name alone. Nvidia steps in instead: if OpenAI misses lease payments or falls behind on construction debt, Nvidia covers the shortfall. OpenAI keeps the building; Nvidia absorbs the loss.
That's not the whole picture, either. In a parallel discussion, the two sides are working out a separate $350 billion deal to finance the chips going inside that same campus. Add it up and the project could top $500 billion — the largest data center ever announced.
Investor Michael Burry, known for his bet against the 2008 mortgage bubble, summed up his reaction in three words: "Around and around we go." His skepticism has a clear logic — Nvidia is fronting money that partly flows back to it as chip revenue, and paper gains from deals like this keep inflating valuations across the whole AI supply chain. Terms haven't been finalized, and the Journal notes the talks could still collapse.
