Nvidia negotiating $250 billion guarantee for OpenAI in Ohio, according to WSJ

The facility in the southern US state of Ohio will be built by SoftBank's energy subsidiary. The planned data center complex in Ohio would rank among the largest in the world. The ten-gigawatt project being realized by the SoftBank Group is intended to enable OpenAI to lease a data center campus with a connected load of ten gigawatts. The first expansion stage with around 800 megawatts is expected to be completed in 2028.

Size and Scale of the Project

Including hardware, the overall project could cost more than $500 billion, making it the largest data center project announced to date worldwide. The total costs for the data center planned for 2028 are expected to amount to $500 billion. Provision is made for ten gigawatts of data center capacity as well as up to ten gigawatts of new generation capacity, of which around 9.2 gigawatts from natural gas. The gas power plant is being financed with $33.3 billion from Japan, originating from the US-Japan trade and investment agreement concluded the previous year.

NVIDIA is also negotiating the financing of chip purchases for OpenAI, which could amount to a total of $350 billion, according to the WSJ. The Nvidia chips intended to run in the halls are not covered by the $250 billion. Their financing is being negotiated separately, according to the report: this involves a volume of up to $350 billion.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman urgently needs fresh money – and also guarantees – to further inflate his AI empire ahead of the planned IPO, and hopes to eventually run AI profitably. Currently, he is burning through billions of dollars every month. Nvidia shares this hope. Originally, in September 2025, a letter of intent for up to $100 billion had been on the table, which CEO Jensen Huang significantly reduced in March with reference to the upcoming OpenAI IPO.

The company holds a stake in OpenAI following a $30 billion investment. The NVIDIA stock rises via NASDAQ in premarket trading by 1.14 percent at one point to $209.20. In recent weeks, investor enthusiasm for high valuations of technology stocks has cooled. Large US companies – from Meta to Alphabet – have increased their borrowing in recent months to finance this expansion.

Criticism and Market Reaction

Critics see this as a form of vendor financing that obscures actual end demand and could allow losses to run rapidly through the entire ecosystem in the event of a downturn. Investor Michael Burry, who recently expanded his short position on Nvidia, commented on the report on X to the effect that the whole thing is going in circles.

According to the "Wall Street Journal," the allocation of data center capacity effectively lies with the US government, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick being a co-decision-maker. It is also a prestige project for SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and the US government of President Donald Trump, which already celebrated the investment as a major success.

Location and Political Involvement

The US Department of Energy had presented the site – under the new name PORTS Technology Campus – in March 2026 together with SoftBank and grid operator AEP Ohio as a public-private partnership, with the groundbreaking taking place on March 20. The campus is being built on the grounds of the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, a uranium enrichment facility from the Cold War era.

In addition to OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic have also expressed interest in capacity at the site. In addition, there is $4.2 billion for grid expansion and new lines. Reuters and Bloomberg picked up the "Wall Street Journal" report, which relies on people familiar with the matter.

The newspaper reported on Sunday, citing insiders. OpenAI is the developer of ChatGPT and is losing money; Nvidia shares the hope of future profitability. The site in Ohio is thus one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the field of artificial intelligence to date.