Nvidia is in discussions to provide approximately $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of what would rank among the largest financing arrangements in technology history, the *Wall Street Journal* reported on July 27, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. <cite index="8-3,8-4">The chipmaker may provide a guarantee of as much as $250 billion to the artificial intelligence (AI) lab, though negotiations are described as early-stage and could collapse or change in terms.</cite>
The Ohio Campus
<cite index="20-4">The campus would be built on U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) land in Pike County, Ohio — the site of a former Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility — and developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of OpenAI investor SoftBank.</cite> <cite index="25-3">The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, now being branded the "PORTS Technology Campus," is expected to include a 10-gigawatt data center and up to 10 gigawatts of new power generation, including 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas generation, according to the DOE.</cite>
<cite index="18-1">Ground was broken on the project in March 2026.</cite> <cite index="21-3">The U.S. Department of Energy announced a public-private partnership with SoftBank and AEP Ohio in March 2026 to redevelop the land, including 10 gigawatts of new power generation and $4.2 billion in transmission upgrades.</cite> <cite index="21-4">Of the planned generation, 9.2 gigawatts would come from natural gas plants funded by $33.3 billion in Japanese capital tied to the U.S.-Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement.</cite>
<cite index="20-5,20-6">OpenAI would control the computing equipment under a 20-year lease, with rent payments beginning once operations start; the first phase, measuring 800 megawatts, is targeted for completion in 2028.</cite> <cite index="2-5">The project is expected to cost more than $500 billion in total, including the chips inside the data center.</cite>
Structure of the Guarantee
<cite index="2-6">The $250 billion guarantee covers the data center lease and debt financing, but would not cover the Nvidia chips inside the center; the chipmaker is also separately discussing financing OpenAI's chip purchases worth up to $350 billion.</cite> <cite index="6-1">Sources familiar with the matter indicated that Nvidia's guarantee would serve as a credit enhancement tool, helping OpenAI secure the financing needed to lease computing power from the data center.</cite> <cite index="2-7">Nvidia's backing would support financing vehicles aimed at reassuring lenders about the project's funding.</cite>
<cite index="5-4">A financial guarantee is a contractual pledge in which one company promises to cover another party's payment obligations if that party cannot pay, and this one would be the largest ever discussed between two private companies.</cite>
Strategic Implications
<cite index="1-4">For OpenAI, a deal would mark a first step toward controlling its own infrastructure rather than renting it from Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle, while for Nvidia, it would help guarantee chip demand for years to come.</cite>
The arrangement extends a deepening financial relationship between the two companies. <cite index="19-8">The chipmaker has already invested $30 billion in OpenAI.</cite> The Ohio guarantee negotiations represent a qualitative shift beyond equity, placing nvidia in the role of credit backstop rather than mere hardware supplier or strategic investor.
<cite index="7-9,7-10">The power for the project is controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal, tied to Tokyo's pledge to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant; U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in deciding who gets access to the site.</cite> <cite index="19-14">Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google have each also approached Lutnick about the site.</cite>
The Ohio project connects to the broader Stargate initiative. <cite index="22-3">The Ohio project sits inside the $500 billion Stargate program announced by OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and President Donald Trump at the White House in January 2025.</cite> The Piketon campus, if built to full scale, would represent a significant expansion of Stargate's existing footprint across seven U.S. sites.
<cite index="6-4,6-5">If completed, the deal would rank among the largest financing arrangements in tech history and mark Nvidia's evolution from a hardware supplier into a central financial architect of AI infrastructure; as of press time, Nvidia, OpenAI, and SoftBank had not publicly commented.</cite>