Nvidia in talks on about $250 billion financing guarantees for OpenAI data center, WSJ says

Reuters reported that Nvidia is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of a large data center project, according to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said the backstop would help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt project that SoftBank's energy subsidiary is developing in southern Ohio. For OpenAI, a deal would be a step toward controlling its own infrastructure instead of renting capacity from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. For Nvidia, it would lock in demand for its chips for years, the report said. The project is expected to cost more than $500 billion in total including chips inside the facility, according to the WSJ. The $250 billion guarantee would cover the data center lease and debt financing but not the Nvidia chips in the center, and the chipmaker was also discussing financing OpenAI chip purchases worth up to $350 billion, the Journal said. The first phase is expected to be finished in 2028 with around 800 megawatts of power, the report said. Power is controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal tied to Tokyo's pledge to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant, with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick involved in access decisions, according to the Journal. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report. Nvidia, OpenAI and the U.S. Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours. OpenAI has been in advanced talks for several weeks to lease the site and is among companies showing strong interest, while Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken to Lutnick in recent weeks, the report said.