Nvidia is in talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion of financing so that OpenAI can lease a 10-gigawatt data-centre campus in southern Ohio, according to a Wall Street Journal report published on 27 July.
The site, in Pike County, is being developed by SoftBank's energy subsidiary. The guarantee under discussion would cover the lease and construction financing. It would not cover the chips.
Two structures, often conflated
Coverage has produced several large numbers that measure different things, and they are easy to run together.
| Figure | What it measures |
|---|---|
| $250 billion | The guarantee under discussion — lease and construction/debt financing for the campus. Excludes chips. |
| ~$350 billion | A separate reported discussion covering financing for OpenAI's purchases of Nvidia chips. |
| ~$600 billion | The two structures added together: Nvidia's total exposure if both were agreed as reported. |
| $500 billion+ | Projected total cost of the development itself, including the chips inside it. |
The $600bn and $500bn+ figures are not alternative estimates of the same thing. One is Nvidia's combined potential exposure across two financing structures; the other is the projected build cost of the project. Neither structure has been agreed.
Why a guarantee is the instrument
OpenAI does not hold an investment-grade credit rating, and remains unprofitable at a reported valuation of about $852 billion. Lenders asked to finance a multi-decade infrastructure lease price that risk against the borrower.
A guarantee moves the question. With Nvidia standing behind the obligation, lenders assess the chipmaker's balance sheet instead of OpenAI's, and the debt prices accordingly. In project finance, a stronger party backstopping a weaker one is routine. What is unusual here is that the guarantor is also the principal supplier.
The pattern this sits in
The structure is not new for Nvidia. Reported deals over the past twenty months follow a consistent shape: the company invests in, lends to, or backstops a customer, and the customer spends on Nvidia silicon or on cloud capacity built from it.
| When | Deal | Reported value |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2024 | Participated in xAI's funding round | $6bn round |
| Sep 2025 | Cloud-capacity agreement with CoreWeave | $6.3bn |
| Sep 2025 | Backed Mistral AI's Series C | €1.7bn round |
| Sep 2025 | Letter of intent with OpenAI, tied to a 10GW deployment | Up to $100bn |
| Nov 2025 | Committed to Anthropic with Microsoft; Anthropic pledged Azure spend | Up to $15bn combined |
| Jan 2026 | Further investment in CoreWeave at $87.20 a share | $2bn |
| Feb 2026 | The $100bn OpenAI letter of intent lapsed; equity stake taken instead | $30bn stake |
| Mar 2026 | Investment in Nebius Group | $2bn |
| Jul 2026 | Ohio lease guarantee under discussion, plus separate chip financing | $250bn + ~$350bn |
Compiled from Benzinga's timeline of Nvidia financing arrangements and contemporaneous reporting. The July 2026 entries are reported talks, not agreements. Bloomberg has put Nvidia's recent deal activity at around $750bn in aggregate.
The February reversal is worth flagging on its own. The original $100 billion letter of intent with OpenAI did not proceed as structured; Nvidia instead took a $30 billion equity position. Announced arrangements at this scale have already been renegotiated once, which is a useful prior when reading the current reports.
The circularity question
That last point is what analysts have fastened onto. Nvidia would be underwriting the financing that lets a customer build the facilities that house its chips, while separately discussing financing for the purchase of those chips.
Revenue recognised from a customer whose ability to pay rests partly on your own credit support is a familiar pattern in technology cycles, and it is why the term circular financing has attached itself to this reporting. It describes a structure; it is not by itself a finding of impropriety.
The physical constraint
Ten gigawatts is the number that matters. You normally see that scale in grid-planning meetings, not corporate procurement. It explains why the developer is SoftBank's energy arm — securing the power is at least as hard as securing the site.
The reason the financing has become the story is that capital is currently the harder constraint. Chips can be manufactured and land can be bought; a lease obligation of this size against an unrated counterparty is what the market has struggled to price.
What ten gigawatts means
The capacity figure is easier to grasp against a national grid than against another data centre, and Singapore makes a usable yardstick for readers in this region.
| Reference point | Capacity |
|---|---|
| Pike County campus, planned | 10 GW |
| Singapore peak electricity demand, 2025 | 8.19 GW |
| Singapore total generation capacity, H1 2025 | 13.26 GW |
| Singapore peak demand projected for 2030, EMA range | 10.1 – 11.8 GW |
Singapore figures from the Energy Market Authority. Comparison is a scale yardstick only — the campus is in Ohio and draws on the US grid. Planned capacity is not continuous draw, and a build of this size is phased over years rather than energised at once.
Read across the rows, a single campus is being planned at a capacity above Singapore's entire peak electricity demand last year, and inside the range the Energy Market Authority expects the country to reach by 2030.
Two qualifications keep that from being overstated. Planned capacity is a ceiling rather than a running load, and nothing of this scale is switched on in one step — the figure describes what the site is being provisioned to support over years of phased construction.
It does explain the choice of counterparty. SoftBank's energy subsidiary is developing the site, and at this scale securing power is the harder half of the problem. Land and construction are commodities; ten gigawatts of firm supply is a grid negotiation.
What is confirmed and what is not
Very little is settled. The reporting originates with the Wall Street Journal. Reuters said it could not immediately verify it, and company representatives did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours.
The talks are described as early. Terms are not finalised, and there is no certainty the package completes in this or any form.
The caveats
- This is single-source reporting, not an announcement. No party has confirmed the structure publicly.
- Talks at this stage collapse routinely. A guarantee under discussion is not a guarantee issued.
- The figures measure different things and should not be summed casually — see the table above.
- This is market reporting, not investment advice. Nothing here is a view on any security.
Key takeaways
- Nvidia is reported in talks to guarantee about $250 billion of lease and construction financing for OpenAI.
- The site is a 10-gigawatt campus in Pike County, Ohio, developed by SoftBank's energy subsidiary.
- A separate discussion of roughly $350 billion would cover chip purchases, taking combined exposure toward $600 billion.
- OpenAI has no investment-grade rating, so Nvidia's credit would effectively stand in for it.
- Nothing is agreed. Reuters could not verify the report, and the talks are described as early.
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