Nvidia guarantees up to $105B of OpenAI's lease on an 8 GW Ohio campus

Nvidia agreed to guarantee up to $105B of OpenAI's obligations on a data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, developed by SB Energy, the SoftBank-owned developer. OpenAI is leasing the site for 20 years; the site is planned for as much as 8 GW of capacity, with the first 800 MW expected online in 2028. The guarantee is partial by design: it covers a portion of the lease and power payments and commits to a minimum value for the site, rather than the full project cost or all of OpenAI's obligations. Nvidia will be the exclusive chip provider for the facility and is separately investing $1.5B in SB Energy, months after OpenAI and SoftBank put $1B into the same developer.

Why it matters

This is the clearest instance yet of the circularity running through AI infrastructure: the chip vendor is underwriting its customer's ability to rent the buildings that will house its chips. For OpenAI the guarantee is what makes a 20-year lease financeable at all — a company with its cash-burn profile does not normally get investment-grade lease terms, and Nvidia's balance sheet is the substitute for that credit. For Nvidia it converts a demand forecast into a contractual obligation: if OpenAI cannot pay, Nvidia owes the landlord, which is a very different risk from selling GPUs and moving on. The residual-value floor is the tell — someone had to take the view that an 8 GW AI campus retains worth in 2046, and the party with the most to lose from doubting it is the one that agreed to it. Set against the local permitting friction the buildout is now hitting, the constraint on AI capacity is drifting from silicon to who will stand behind the paper.

What to watch

Whether the guarantee shows up as a contingent liability in Nvidia's filings and at what size, whether other hyperscalers demand similar backstops, and whether the first 800 MW holds its 2028 date.