Nvidia is in early talks to provide a $250 billion financial guarantee backing a massive artificial intelligence data center campus in southern Ohio, the Wall Street Journal reported on July 26, 2026. The project would be the largest AI infrastructure undertaking ever attempted.
The campus is being developed by SB Energy, an energy subsidiary of SoftBank Group. It is designed for 10 gigawatts of computing capacity — a scale that dwarfs the vast majority of existing data centers globally. The project’s total cost, including the AI chips needed to fill the facilities, is expected to exceed $500 billion.
Nvidia’s proposed $250 billion would cover the lease and construction debt for the data center infrastructure itself — not the chips. The chips are a separate conversation. Nvidia is also discussing a deal to help finance the chip purchases for OpenAI, and that portion alone could reach $350 billion. Nvidia has already invested $30 billion in OpenAI as a company.
One reason this arrangement exists in its current form is OpenAI’s credit profile. The company does not hold an investment-grade credit rating, which means borrowing hundreds of billions at standard commercial terms would be prohibitively expensive. Nvidia’s financial backstop acts as a guarantee that brings borrowing costs down to a manageable level. In return, Nvidia secures enormous long-term chip sales.
The power supply for the facility is controlled by the US government and is being funded through a separate arrangement tied to a recent US-Japan trade deal. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in determining which projects receive access to that power.
The first phase of the project is expected to deliver roughly 800 megawatts of capacity by 2028. For comparison, OpenAI’s Abu Dhabi data center, which drew attention for consuming power equivalent to five nuclear reactors, is a fraction of this Ohio project’s planned scale.
OpenAI’s motivation is infrastructure independence. The company currently depends on cloud providers — including Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle — for computing capacity. Owning or leasing dedicated infrastructure gives OpenAI more control over costs and operations. The Ohio region itself has become a focal point for AI data center investment and infrastructure decisions across the industry.
Negotiations remain in early stages. Both parties have confirmed the discussions are ongoing, but the terms could change or the deal could fall apart entirely.