OpenAI has finalized a 10-gigawatt data center lease agreement with SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, marking the company's largest infrastructure commitment to date following weeks of intense negotiations. The Ohio facility, which celebrated its groundbreaking ceremony in March at a southern Ohio campus, is positioned to become one of the most significant computational hubs in the artificial intelligence sector.

NVIDIA has stepped in as a critical financial backer for the project, providing a partial asset-value guarantee that will help the developers secure debt financing while limiting the chipmaker's overall risk exposure. Under the terms of this arrangement, NVIDIA will backstop a portion of the completed facility's asset value, initially covering the first phase of approximately 5 gigawatts of computing capacity. In exchange for this guarantee, NVIDIA secures exclusive chip-supplier status for the first half of the Ohio campus and will receive an equity stake in SB Energy, with the option to extend its guarantee coverage to the entire园区 at a later stage.

The 20-year lease, partially disclosed on Monday, represents yet another complex transaction in the AI industry's race to secure massive computing resources. Chip manufacturers like NVIDIA and Google are increasingly leveraging their substantial balance sheets to help AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic finalize leases, enabling project developers to raise debt while keeping their own financial risks contained.

The southern Ohio site, which partially occupies a former U.S. Department of Energy uranium enrichment facility, is expected to generate enough electricity to power 7 million homes once fully operational. Both U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have been deeply involved in the project's development.

According to insiders, NVIDIA's guarantee is designed to reduce financing difficulty and lower borrowing costs by strengthening lender confidence—even in a scenario where OpenAI decides not to renew its lease, the data center assets would retain their underlying value. The guarantee mechanism incorporates multiple layers of risk mitigation, requiring a series of procedural steps to be completed before any actual payout from NVIDIA is triggered.

Sources familiar with the arrangement explain that if OpenAI were to exit the project, SB Energy would first seek a new tenant at equivalent rental rates. If a suitable tenant cannot be found, the assets would then be sold off. Under the condition that Phase 1 is completed, NVIDIA would cover any value shortfall from asset disposition, with a maximum liability capped at $105 billion. Insiders emphasize that this mechanism only backs the data center's asset value, not OpenAI's ongoing rental payments, significantly limiting NVIDIA's risk profile. The guarantee applies exclusively to completed data centers and excludes any facilities still under construction.

NVIDIA stands to gain substantial commercial benefits from the project in the near term. The company plans to supply hundreds of billions of dollars worth of chips to the first phase of the Ohio development, and discussions are underway for NVIDIA to provide financing for OpenAI's chip purchases. The completion of this lease brings an end to weeks of negotiations, with OpenAI, SB Energy, and NVIDIA having recently adjusted the scale of the backstop guarantee to address investor concerns regarding NVIDIA's exposure. Morgan Stanley has served as NVIDIA's financial advisor for this transaction.

Under the agreement, NVIDIA will also complete a $1.5 billion equity investment in SB Energy, which is majority-owned by Japan's SoftBank and counts OpenAI among its investors. Sources reveal that SB Energy has already engaged investment banks to explore an initial public offering as early as next month, targeting a raise of $5 billion to $7 billion. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that NVIDIA had initially planned to provide a one-time guarantee covering the entire 10-gigawatt project, with a total exposure of approximately $250 billion—news that caused NVIDIA's share price to decline 5% when it surfaced in late July.

The entire data center campus will be supported by a 9.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant. Under a recently concluded trade agreement, ownership of the power plant will transfer to the U.S. government, with construction funded by Japan.