OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease agreement with SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, for a data center with a capacity of 10 gigawatts. The campus will be located in Ohio, USA, and is expected to become one of the largest AI computing hubs to date. As part of the deal, NVIDIA will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy in exchange for equity, and will also provide a guarantee for the project's asset value, helping the developer secure debt financing more smoothly.

Chip Giant Becomes a "Financing Guarantor"

NVIDIA's guarantee initially covers the first phase of the project, which has a power capacity of about 5 gigawatts. The condition is that NVIDIA becomes the exclusive chip supplier for the first half of the campus and retains the option to expand the support to the full 10 gigawatts. This design gives lenders more confidence: even if OpenAI does not renew the lease in the future, the built data center itself still has high asset value, thus reducing overall financing costs.

Notably, NVIDIA's risk is strictly "protected." Its guarantee covers only the completed facilities and uses a staged mitigation mechanism—should OpenAI exit, SB Energy must first re-rent the facility at original price and then attempt to sell it. Only when the selling price is lower than the project's value will NVIDIA cover the difference, with an upper limit of about $10.5 billion for the first phase.

This transaction is the latest example in the recent complex wave of financing competition among AI companies for computing power. In recent years, chip giants like NVIDIA and Google have frequently used their balance sheets to endorse startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic. This helps developers borrow money based on lease agreements while keeping their own risks within manageable limits. After weeks of negotiations, the deal was finalized on Monday. The three parties also specifically adjusted the guarantee scale to address concerns about NVIDIA's risk exposure.