OpenAI is in discussions with Nvidia about a substantial financing arrangement that could provide up to $250 billion in credit backing for the artificial intelligence company’s ambitious data center expansion plans, CNBC confirmed.
The proposed backstop would enable OpenAI to raise debt for a massive 10-gigawatt data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, leveraging Nvidia’s creditworthiness, according to a source familiar with the discussions. The guarantee would specifically cover lease and construction debt for the facility, but not the Nvidia chips that would power it, which the companies are negotiating separately.
Nvidia declined to comment on the discussions. The Wall Street Journal first reported the negotiations about the $250 billion backstop.
A Former Uranium Plant Transformed
The Ohio site once operated as a uranium-enrichment plant, the source said. To put the scale in perspective, 10 gigawatts of power is roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of 8 million U.S. households, based on a CNBC analysis of Energy Information Administration data. The total cost of the data center campus could exceed $500 billion, according to the source.
A second person familiar with the plans cautioned that the discussions remain ongoing and subject to change.
The AI Infrastructure Arms Race
OpenAI launched the current AI boom with its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, and has been scrambling to secure the computing power it believes necessary to meet future demand while facing intensifying competition from Anthropic, Google, Amazon, and Meta. Those companies are collectively committing hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditures to build their own AI infrastructure.
The relationship between OpenAI and Nvidia has evolved considerably. In September, Nvidia announced plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership that would see the company deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. That full investment never came to fruition, though Nvidia did contribute $30 billion to the record-breaking funding round that OpenAI closed in March.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested the March investment “might be the last time” the company backs OpenAI before it goes public. OpenAI confidentially filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June, though it has not disclosed a timeline for the market debut.
Valuation and Competitive Pressures
Private investors have valued OpenAI at nearly $1 trillion, betting on the company’s ability to maintain its AI leadership position and develop a sustainable long-term business model. However, that model faces mounting uncertainty as numerous open-weight alternatives, many originating from China, threaten to undercut OpenAI’s pricing power.
The Ohio data center campus is being developed by SoftBank and SB Energy in partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. SoftBank, a major OpenAI investor, announced plans earlier this year to invest $1 billion in SB Energy alongside the AI company.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/27/nvidia-and-openai-in-talks-for-up-to-250-billion-dollar-ai-backstop.html
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