A Reported $250 Billion Guarantee

Nvidia is in talks to provide a financial backstop of roughly $250 billion that would help OpenAI lease and finance a massive AI data center campus in southern Ohio, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, July 26, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report, so the figures should be treated as reported rather than confirmed.

Inside the Ohio Megaproject

The proposed 10-gigawatt campus is being developed by SB Energy, the energy subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank Group, on a decommissioned uranium-enrichment site about 50 miles south of Columbus, Ohio. The project could ultimately cost more than $500 billion, including the Nvidia chips needed to power it, making it one of the largest AI infrastructure builds ever planned. Its first phase is expected to deliver around 800 megawatts of capacity by 2028, before scaling up toward the full 10-gigawatt target.

Why OpenAI Needs a Guarantee

Since OpenAI remains privately held and lacks an investment-grade credit rating, borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars on its own would come at a steep cost. Nvidia's guarantee would cover financing tied to the data center lease and construction debt, giving lenders greater confidence in getting repaid. Separately, Nvidia and OpenAI are reportedly discussing financing for OpenAI's purchase of Nvidia chips, an arrangement that could total another $350 billion on top of the data center guarantee. Notably, Nvidia's own chips are excluded from the data center financing guarantee itself.

A US Government Angle

According to the Journal's reporting, the electricity powering the campus is tied to a 2025 US-Japan trade deal and is effectively controlled by the US government, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly involved in deciding which companies get access to that power. SB Energy would operate the power plant under a fee arrangement with the government. Terms of the overall deal remain unsettled, and the arrangement could still fall through.

Part of a Bigger Industry Pattern

The Journal noted that similar financing arrangements have already been used elsewhere in the AI industry, including instances where Google has backed data center projects tied to Anthropic. Beyond OpenAI, the report said Microsoft, Google and Anthropic have also held discussions with US officials about the same Ohio site, underscoring how competitive the race for large-scale AI compute capacity has become. If completed, the Ohio campus would mark OpenAI's first major data center as a direct tenant, reducing its reliance on cloud providers such as Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle.

Market Reaction and Skepticism

The report drew sharp reactions from prominent market watchers over the weekend. Investor Michael Burry, known for his bets against the 2008 housing bubble, wrote on X that Nvidia guaranteeing financing tied to OpenAI's chip spending amounted to "around and around we go," while tech commentator Ed Zitron questioned both the financing structure and SoftBank's role in the deal, calling it a bearish sign for the wider AI buildout. Nvidia has already invested $30 billion directly in OpenAI, adding to scrutiny over how deeply intertwined the two companies' finances have become.

What Comes Next

With terms still being negotiated and Reuters unable to independently confirm the WSJ's figures, the deal's final shape remains uncertain. Given the scale involved, any formal agreement between Nvidia, OpenAI and SB Energy would likely draw significant attention from regulators, competitors and investors tracking the rapidly escalating costs of building out global AI infrastructure.