Nvidia Backs Up to $105 Billion in Financing for an OpenAI Data Center in Ohio

Nvidia will provide up to $105 billion in financing for an OpenAI data center at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, CNBC reported. The credit supports an initial 4.25 gigawatts of computing capacity, with an option for a further 3.75 gigawatts. SB Energy will build and manage the site under a 20-year lease to OpenAI, Nvidia supplies the compute, and capacity is expected to come online in phases starting in 2028.

The structure is vendor financing at industrial scale. Nvidia is lending money against the purchase of its own accelerators, and the borrower is also its largest customer. It follows an earlier arrangement with Wall Street firms to pursue $500 billion of financing for Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs), and CNBC's own reporting frames it as Nvidia's competitive advantage shifting from chip design to its balance sheet as Advanced Micro Devices and Google narrow the technical gap with rack-scale systems and their own in-house accelerators.

For anyone planning inference capacity, the binding constraint in this deal is not chip supply. It is 4.25 gigawatts of interconnection, land and construction on a schedule that begins two years from now. The compute that will serve models in 2029 is being financed today, on terms set by the supplier.