Nvidia Guarantees $105B Lease for OpenAI Ohio Campus

According to an SEC filing dated August 17, 2026, Nvidia has entered into a partnership with developer SB Energy to guarantee leases at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio. Under the agreement, Nvidia provides residual value guaranties covering 4.25 gigawatts of IT load, with the option to extend credit support to an additional 3.8 gigawatts. This financial backstop is capped at $105 billion. Nvidia will only pay if the tenant, OpenAI, defaults or becomes insolvent during the 20-year lease. Alongside this commitment, Nvidia is making a separate $1.5 billion equity investment in SB Energy, joining existing investors SoftBank Group and OpenAI.

The campus, located on a Cold War-era uranium enrichment site leased from the Department of Energy, will begin coming online in phases starting in 2028. To power the site, SB Energy and AEP Ohio are investing $4.2 billion in transmission infrastructure, including four substations and 765-kilovolt lines. SoftBank Group and SB Energy plan to build 10 gigawatts of new power generation, including at least 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas, to support 10 gigawatts of total data center development. The project is expected to create over 10,000 construction jobs and 2,000 operational roles, while OpenAI has contributed $40 million to match SB Energy's $40 million community benefits fund.

For AI practitioners, this deal guarantees that OpenAI will deploy Nvidia's full-stack DSX AI factory platform, including its GPUs, CPUs, and networking, across the initial 4.25 gigawatts. Nvidia will serve as the exclusive AI compute provider for the site. This massive buildout follows OpenAI's other major infrastructure moves, including a seven-year, $38 billion cloud partnership with AWS signed in November 2025, and the cancellation of a Texas Stargate expansion with Oracle.

This arrangement represents a shift in how AI infrastructure is financed. Instead of simply selling chips, Nvidia is acting as a financial guarantor for the physical space its hardware occupies. If OpenAI, which recently reported that its enterprise revenue has overtaken its ChatGPT consumer business, fails to meet its lease obligations, Nvidia can assume the lease, initiate a sale, or find a replacement tenant. This ensures Nvidia's DSX platform remains anchored in one of the largest physical compute clusters in the world.