NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) is reportedly in talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion in financing for OpenAI‘s new 10-gigawatt Ohio data center, a project developed by SoftBank’s energy subsidiary, SB Energy, according to The Wall Street Journal.
- NVDA stock is down on the report. See the chart and price action here.
Nvidia would also discuss separately financing up to $350 billion of chip purchases tied to the same site, pushing total project costs past $500 billion and making it the largest data center ever proposed.
The arrangement would let SB Energy borrow against Nvidia’s balance sheet rather than OpenAI’s, since the ChatGPT maker still lacks an investment-grade credit rating.
The scale drew immediate pushback. Investor Michael Burry and commentator Ed Zitron flagged the guarantee as further evidence of a self-reinforcing loop, with Burry writing “around and around we go.”
Nvidia’s own filings show why: its first quarter fiscal 2027 10-Q caps total lease-guarantee exposure at $3.5 billion, meaning a $250 billion commitment would run roughly 71 times its current disclosed guarantee book.
This is the latest entry in a pattern stretching back nearly two years:
- October 2024: Nvidia puts roughly $100 million into OpenAI‘s $6.6 billion round.
- December 2024: Nvidia joins xAI’s $6 billion raise.
- September 2025: Nvidia signs a $6.3 billion cloud-capacity agreement with CoreWeave, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) and backs Mistral AI’s €1.7 billion ($1,933,665,000) Series C.
- September 2025: Nvidia and OpenAI announce a letter of intent for Nvidia to invest up to $100 billion as OpenAI deploys 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems.
- October 2025: Nvidia joins Nscale’s $433 million SAFE round.
- November 2025: Nvidia and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) commit up to $15 billion combined to Anthropic, which pledges $30 billion in Azure spend.
- January 2026: Nvidia adds $2 billion more into CoreWeave at $87.20 a share.
- February 2026: The original $100 billion OpenAI commitment collapses; Nvidia instead takes a $30 billion equity stake in OpenAI’s $110 billion round.
- March 2026: Nvidia invests $2 billion in Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS) and backs Thinking Machines’ $2 billion raise.
Each deal shares the same skeleton: Nvidia writes a check or backstops debt, and the recipient turns around and spends heavily on Nvidia silicon or Nvidia-powered cloud capacity.
Nvidia has consistently maintained it does not contractually require partners to buy its chips with the proceeds.
CEO Jensen Huang had suggested in March that the $30 billion OpenAI stake and $10 billion Anthropic commitment might mark the end of Nvidia’s largest AI equity checks, citing both companies’ expected IPOs.
The Ohio site talks suggest the chipmaker has instead found a new vehicle for the same dynamic, shifting from direct equity into loan backstops as OpenAI’s projected compute spending climbs toward $750 billion through 2030.
Terms remain unsettled, and people familiar with the talks caution the deal could still fall apart.
NVDA Stock Price Activity: Nvidia stock shed 4.99% on Monday to close at $196.51, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Over the past month, NVDA has gained about 1.5% versus a 0.3% rise in the S&P 500 and is up roughly 4% year-to-date compared to the index’s 7.8% gain.