Nvidia to backstop $250B for OpenAI data center lease. Jensen Huang defends Chinese open-source AI days before.

OpenAI is close to leasing a $500 billion data center in southern Ohio with Nvidia providing up to $250 billion in financial guarantees, according to three people familiar with the project. The chipmaker would backstop the lease and construction debt for a 10-gigawatt campus developed by SoftBank's energy subsidiary in Pike County, letting OpenAI raise capital on the strength of Nvidia's credit rating.

The deal is not final. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick must approve the tenant. Microsoft, Google, and possibly other companies have also submitted bids.

The Nvidia backstop covers the building, not the chips. OpenAI is separately discussing a chip purchase valued at up to $350 billion with Nvidia, the Wall Street Journal reported. The total project cost could exceed $500 billion.

A 10-gigawatt data center is roughly equivalent to the annual power consumption of 8 million US households. The Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio generates about 0.9 gigawatts. This single campus would draw more than ten times that.

The financial architecture matters more than the headline number. Nvidia is not writing a check.

It is lending its balance sheet, which carries an investment-grade credit rating, to OpenAI's lease. OpenAI raises debt. Nvidia guarantees payment.

OpenAI gets the compute. Nvidia gets the chip orders. SoftBank gets the development fees and power-sale proceeds.

Days before the data center talks surfaced, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly defended Chinese open-source AI models against potential Washington restrictions. "The market misunderstood the impact of DeepSeek the first time," Huang said in an Axios interview. "They are misunderstanding the impact of Kimi again this time."

Both moves serve the same interest. Chinese open-source models run on Nvidia chips. The Ohio data center runs on Nvidia chips. One expands the demand pool. The other locks in the single largest customer.

The site sits on federally owned land in Pike County. Japan agreed to fund $33 billion of the power infrastructure as part of a trade deal in exchange for lower tariffs. Japan and the US will share proceeds from power sales until Japan recoups its investment, after which the US holds 90 percent control.

First phase: 800 megawatts by 2028. Full 10 gigawatts: timeline undisclosed.

The compute land grab is accelerating.

OpenAI's existing data center commitments include a $20 billion, 3.2-gigawatt campus in Effingham County, Georgia, announced last week. The Ohio project would be more than three times that by power capacity. Meta is expanding a Louisiana site to 5 gigawatts. Amazon committed to a $25 billion investment in Anthropic with a $100 billion long-term cloud deal.

Context matters. Nvidia previously said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership in September 2025. That investment never materialized, though Nvidia contributed $30 billion to OpenAI's record funding round in March 2026.

Huang said it "might be the last time" Nvidia invests before OpenAI's IPO. OpenAI confidentially filed to go public in June. The data center backstop is a different instrument entirely: credit, not equity.

One loose thread: Lutnick has not chosen the tenant. If Google or Microsoft wins the site, the compute balance shifts and OpenAI's capacity gap grows. The decision could come within weeks. The infrastructure game is not settled. It just got bigger.

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