NVIDIA backs OpenAI's 8GW Ohio AI campus with $1.5B equity investment and compute guarantee

NVIDIA has finalized a land, power, and shell (LPS) financial guarantee for OpenAI's massive 10-gigawatt data center project in Pike County, Ohio. The company initially committed to financing 4.25 IT-gigawatts (IT-GW), but retains an option to extend coverage to the full 8 IT-GW site later.

The deal is structured in partnership with SoftBank's SB Energy, which will build, own, and operate the facility—now named PORTS-Pike Technology Campus—under a 20-year lease directly to OpenAI. NVIDIA will serve as the exclusive AI compute infrastructure provider for the campus.

Separately, NVIDIA confirmed a direct $1.5 billion equity investment into SB Energy to support regional grid infrastructure and site development. Capacity at the site is scheduled to come online in multiple phases starting in 2028.

"AI is becoming infrastructure—the foundation for intelligence in every industry—and land, power and shell have become vital in the age of AI. Now is the time to scale the AI infrastructure that will power the next industrial revolution," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "We are securing long-lived infrastructure for NVIDIA compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI platforms."

The deal does not necessarily mean NVIDIA will not spend significantly more in the long run, as the option to expand coverage to the full 8 IT-GW site remains open. The initial commitment covers the first phase of development, with the potential for further financial guarantees as the project scales.