Nvidia Puts Up to $105 Billion on the Line to Guarantee OpenAI's Ohio Data Center

Nvidia filed papers with the SEC on Monday, August 17, laying out exactly how far it's going to keep OpenAI's chip demand flowing: up to $105 billion in guaranteed lease payments for a data center campus built on the site of a decommissioned Cold War uranium enrichment plant in Pike County, Ohio.

This is on top of, and separate from, the $22.9 billion Tomahawk contract and the venture capital defense-tech numbers already circulating this week. Nvidia's balance sheet is directly backing another company's ability to pay rent for two decades.

What Nvidia Actually Signed

According to the 8-K filing reported by StockTitan, Nvidia entered "residual value guaranty agreements" tied to leases covering roughly 4.25 gigawatts of IT load at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, with the option to add credit support for another 3.8 gigawatts, bringing total potential capacity to about 8 gigawatts.

The filing caps Nvidia's aggregate payment obligation on the initial commitment at $105 billion. That number only kicks in once the developer, SB Energy, hits "ready-for-service" conditions, which are expected to start in 2028, according to the filing.

Here's the mechanism, plainly: if OpenAI goes insolvent or stops paying rent, Nvidia has to cover the gap between the guaranteed minimum lease value and whatever the landlord can recover by re-leasing or selling the capacity. Nvidia then gets to choose whether to assume the lease itself, force a replacement tenant search, push a sale, or stall for up to a year while covering costs. OpenAI has agreed to indemnify Nvidia for anything it actually pays out, per the filing.

In plain terms: Nvidia is co-signing OpenAI's rent for the next two decades. If OpenAI can't pay, Nvidia pays, and only later tries to get reimbursed by an OpenAI that, by definition, would already be in financial trouble.

The Ohio Site and the Jobs Numbers

SB Energy will build, own and operate the campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a federally remediated site, under a 20-year lease to OpenAI, according to a joint release from Nvidia and SB Energy. Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion directly into SB Energy alongside existing backers SoftBank Group and OpenAI.

OpenAI, in its own release, said the project will generate 35,000 construction jobs over a six-year buildout through 2032 and 2,500 permanent operating positions. SB Energy and SoftBank are committing to build at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation and invest $4.2 billion in regional grid upgrades through a partnership with AEP Ohio.

OpenAI also pledged $40 million to a community grant fund, on top of $40 million already committed by SB Energy, plus $84 million in free ChatGPT Codex credits for Ohio college students. The first 800 megawatts are expected online in 2028, largely riding on existing AEP infrastructure, according to OpenAI's statement. Everything past that requires new gas-fired power plants and transmission lines that haven't been built yet.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was an early investor in SB Energy, and OpenAI itself holds a stake in the company, a relationship CNBC flagged directly. That means the "customer," the "landlord," and one of the guarantors all have overlapping financial interests in seeing this deal get built and get paid.

The Number Actually Moved, and Nobody's Hiding It

CNBC reported that Nvidia had previously discussed backstopping up to $250 billion for a full 10-gigawatt build at this same Ohio site, and that the Wall Street Journal reported last week Nvidia was set to trim that guarantee to under $120 billion. The final filed number, $105 billion for the initial 4.25-gigawatt phase, lands below both of those figures. That's a meaningful de-risking from where talks reportedly started, and it's the kind of detail that matters when judging whether Nvidia is getting more disciplined or just re-slicing exposure across more deals.

Why This Keeps Coming Up

CNBC's framing is the most direct on this point: this filing is "the latest in a string of financing maneuvers" that have drawn "concerns about circular financing in the AI trade." Nvidia sells chips to OpenAI, backstops the debt that lets OpenAI's landlord build the building, and takes an equity stake in the landlord. Money moves in a loop where Nvidia is simultaneously the supplier, the guarantor, and an investor in the counterparty.

Analysts are asking a legitimate question: if OpenAI's revenue doesn't materialize the way its compute spending assumes, who actually holds the bag? The filing itself answers that with unusual clarity. Nvidia does, up to $105 billion, until it can get OpenAI to reimburse it.

Nvidia's own framing, delivered by CEO Jensen Huang, is that this is "long-lived infrastructure" investment, with OpenAI's total Nvidia chip spending projected at roughly $600 billion through 2030. That number represents Nvidia's expectation, not a signed, fixed contract for that full amount.

The complete legal terms of the guaranty agreements are expected to appear as exhibits in Nvidia's next quarterly report, covering the quarter ended July 26, 2026, according to StockTitan's review of the filing. That document will be the next real test of how exposed Nvidia's balance sheet actually is if OpenAI's revenue growth doesn't keep pace with its compute bill.