Overview
- Multiple outlets on Monday reported, citing the Wall Street Journal, that Nvidia is negotiating to guarantee roughly $250 billion to help OpenAI lease a planned 10‑gigawatt data center campus in southern Ohio.
- Those reports say Nvidia is separately discussing up to $350 billion to finance OpenAI’s purchase of Nvidia chips for the same project, creating a potential combined exposure of as much as $600 billion if both deals close.
- Nvidia, OpenAI and the U.S. Commerce Department have not confirmed the talks and Reuters and other outlets said they could not independently verify the WSJ report, with sources describing negotiations as ongoing and subject to change.
- Power for the site is described as federally controlled and tied to a Japan‑funded natural gas and transmission package, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is reported to be deciding who receives access, with Anthropic, Microsoft and Google also in discussions.
- Analysts warn the scale would reshape vendor roles and raise 'circular financing' and concentration risks because Nvidia’s disclosed guarantee limits and cash reserves are far smaller than the reported sums, and the first phase of the project is expected to deliver about 800 MW by 2028 before scaling to 10 GW.