Nvidia in talks to guarantee up to $250 billion for OpenAI's giant Ohio data center

The negotiations, reported by the Wall Street Journal, would back what could become the largest data center project ever built, and tie Nvidia's own balance sheet to its biggest customer's credit.

Nvidia is negotiating a roughly $250 billion guarantee to backstop lease and construction financing for OpenAI's planned 10-gigawatt data center campus on a former uranium enrichment site in Piketon, Ohio, people familiar with the talks told the Wall Street Journal. The guarantee would help OpenAI, which lacks investment grade credit on its own, borrow on better terms; Nvidia is separately discussing financing up to $350 billion of OpenAI's chip purchases. Total project costs, including hardware, could top $500 billion, with an initial 800 megawatt phase targeted for 2028. Both sides caution the terms are not final and the financing could still fall apart.