Nvidia Weighs $250 Billion Guarantee for OpenAI Data Center

Nvidia is in advanced talks to provide a financial guarantee of roughly $250 billion that would let OpenAI lease a massive data center campus being built in Ohio. The news, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was confirmed by other business and tech outlets, and the market responded by sending Nvidia shares down nearly 5 percent, below $200.

The Ohio Campus

The project involves a data center complex that SB Energy, a company affiliated with SoftBank, is developing in Piketon, Pike County, Ohio, on the site of a former federal uranium enrichment plant that operated from the 1950s until 2001. Ultimately, the facility is meant to have a capacity of 10 gigawatts, making it one of the largest projects of its kind currently planned in the United States.

The first phase, delivering about 800 megawatts of capacity, is set to come online in 2028. The investment also requires expanding the power grid, including $4.2 billion worth of transmission work by AEP Ohio, plus an additional 9.2 gigawatts of new generating capacity, mostly from natural gas.

Guarantee and Separate Chip Financing

The $250 billion guarantee under discussion would cover the data center's lease and the construction debt tied to building it, but would not directly involve the purchase of Nvidia's chips themselves. In parallel, the company is holding separate talks about financing OpenAI's purchase of its chips, a deal that could be worth as much as $350 billion.

No terms have been finalized, and the negotiations themselves, as sources close to the matter stress, could still fall apart. If finalized, however, it would be one of the largest financial guarantees ever agreed between two private companies.

The scale of the commitment raises questions about the health of Nvidia's balance sheet. The amount under discussion is roughly equal to the company's total assets, which stood at $259.5 billion at the end of April 2026, though the company also holds substantial cash - $62.6 billion at the end of the previous fiscal year.

Circular Financing Concerns

The structure, in which Nvidia finances a customer that then uses that same money to buy Nvidia's own chips, has revived debate over so-called circular financing, the capital flowing in a loop through the AI industry. Critics say such arrangements can inflate real demand for chips and mask the scale of losses incurred by companies building AI infrastructure.

And here we go again. Nvidia is set to guarantee $200 billion of ChatGPT spending on Nvidia chips - Michael Burry, the investor known for betting against the housing market, as depicted in 'The Big Short'

The Bank for International Settlements warned in this year's annual report that these kinds of interlocking AI infrastructure financing deals carry systemic risk. Investors are asking whether Nvidia's growing involvement in financing its own customers reflects real demand for computing power, or is instead propping up an artificially fueled investment cycle.

What Comes Next

Neither Nvidia nor OpenAI has officially confirmed the details of the negotiations, and the terms of the deal remain fluid. For Polish companies and investors following the AI sector, the case shows just how much the global boom in AI infrastructure now rests on a closed circle of a few players financing each other's purchases and construction, which increases the entire market's sensitivity to individual decisions like this one in Ohio.