Nvidia in talks to back OpenAI’s $500B data center lease in Ohio

Nvidia is negotiating to financially support OpenAI’s 20-year lease of a massive data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, a project with construction costs projected to exceed $500 billion. The facility is part of OpenAI’s Stargate initiative and would deliver 10 gigawatts of total capacity when fully built out. The first phase alone targets 800 megawatts, with completion slated for 2028.

What’s actually being built

The Ohio campus is designed as a vertically integrated AI factory with 9.2 gigawatts of on-site natural gas power generation, a partnership involving SB Energy (a SoftBank subsidiary), and assistance from the US Department of Energy.

The project is being described as one of the largest single integration efforts in AI infrastructure history. Nvidia’s involvement goes beyond just shipping GPUs to fill the racks. The company is being asked to put real capital behind the lease itself, sharing the financial risk of a facility that won’t be fully operational for years.

This builds on a partnership announced in September 2025, when Nvidia committed up to $100 billion to support the deployment of at least 10 gigawatts of hardware configurations for AI infrastructure. The Ohio deal appears to be a concrete manifestation of that broader commitment.

What this means for investors

The financing structure is worth watching. If chip manufacturers routinely start backing infrastructure leases, it could reshape how capital flows through the technology sector.

The 2028 timeline for the first phase means investors have roughly two years before any of this capacity comes online. Between now and then, the project will need to navigate permitting, construction, power interconnection, and whatever regulatory scrutiny a $500 billion energy-intensive facility attracts in rural Appalachia.

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