Nvidia is underwriting $105 billion of the demand for its own chips
Nvidia will provide up to $105 billion in credit support for an OpenAI data centre in Pike County, Ohio, invest $1.5 billion in the developer, and be the exclusive supplier of the compute inside it. The vendor is now financing, equipping and effectively guaranteeing its own order book.
On 17 August Nvidia said it would back a new OpenAI data centre in Pike County, Ohio with up to $105 billion in financing. The structure is worth reading slowly. SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed developer, builds, owns and operates the campus. Nvidia invests $1.5 billion into SB Energy directly. Nvidia provides the credit support that makes the build financeable. And Nvidia is the exclusive provider of the compute that goes inside. Capacity is expected to phase in from 2028, starting at 4.25 gigawatts with an option on a further 3.75.
Each of those roles is ordinary on its own. Vendors take equity in customers. Vendors offer financing. Vendors sign exclusivity. Holding all four at once, on a single asset, is what makes this different — and it arrives three weeks after Nvidia announced a $500 billion infrastructure financing vehicle with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR.
The bull case is that Nvidia is doing what a utility does when the grid cannot expand fast enough: putting its balance sheet where the bottleneck is. Power and land, not silicon, are the binding constraints on 2028 capacity, and a chip vendor that ignores them is a chip vendor with warehouses full of unsold inventory.
The bear case is the word that keeps appearing in the coverage — circular. Revenue recognised on chips sold into a project the seller financed is not the same quality of revenue as a cash sale to an unrelated buyer, and the market is entitled to ask which it is looking at. Neither reading is settled by an announcement. What is settled is the shape: Nvidia has stopped being only a supplier to this build-out and has become one of its principal creditors.
CNBC — Nvidia backing $105 billion in financing for OpenAI data center in Ohio → · The Detroit News — Chip giant Nvidia reaches $1.5 billion deal for AI computing capacity → · Forbes — Why Nvidia Is Building Data Centers, Not Just The Chips Inside Them →