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Nvidia Locks In AI Infrastructure Power
11 Jun
Summary
- OpenAI eyes $500B Ohio campus with Nvidia as financial backer.
- Nvidia moves beyond chip sales to become an infrastructure capital partner.
- The proposed Ohio data center would be double the size of Northern Virginia's market.
OpenAI is reportedly in negotiations to lease a significant 10-gigawatt data center campus in southern Ohio, with an estimated construction cost of at least $500 billion. The project, situated on federal land in Piketon at a former uranium enrichment plant site, is being developed by SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary.
Nvidia is expected to supply hardware and provide a financial guarantee for the lease and financing, evolving from a chip vendor to a capital partner in AI infrastructure. This follows a September 2025 agreement where Nvidia committed up to $100 billion to deploy Nvidia systems for OpenAI.
The scale of the proposed Ohio campus would be approximately double the size of the entire Northern Virginia data center market as of 2025, exceeding the combined planned capacity of the Stargate initiative. The U.S. Department of Energy has partnered with SoftBank and SB Energy to redevelop the Piketon site, with SB Energy committing to build 10 gigawatts of power generation.
This reported deal highlights Nvidia's strategy to tie its capital directly to long-term AI infrastructure demand, bolstering its significant data center revenue growth. Critics question the circular revenue dynamics of supplier-backed financing, but OpenAI has defended such bold infrastructure bets. While the deal remains unconfirmed by Reuters as of June 9, 2026, Nvidia's strategic shift towards financing AI capacity is evident.
