OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease for roughly 8 gigawatts of computing capacity in Pike County, Ohio, and Nvidia has agreed to stand behind it. The chipmaker will be the exclusive supplier of AI compute at SB Energy’s PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, invest $1.5 billion in the SoftBank-backed developer, and provide credit support for the land, power and shell of the initial 4.25 IT-gigawatt phase. SB Energy will build, own and operate the site. OpenAI is only the tenant.The structure is the interesting part. Nvidia is backstopping the value of the finished data centre rather than OpenAI’s rent, according to The Wall Street Journal. If OpenAI walked away, SB Energy would first look for another customer at the same price, then try to sell the campus. Only after that would Nvidia cover the difference—up to $105 billion once the first phase is complete. The guarantee covers completed buildings, not construction sites, which keeps the chipmaker’s exposure narrower than the headline number suggests.
Nvidia trimmed its exposure after a $250 billion figure spooked investors
That ceiling has already moved once. Nvidia initially planned to guarantee all 10 gigawatts of OpenAI’s commitments upfront, which the Journal reported could have totalled around $250 billion. Nvidia shares fell 5% in late July when the discussions became public. The company is now expected to guarantee under $120 billion at the start, with an option to extend to the remaining 3.75 IT-GW.Jensen Huang framed it as durable infrastructure, saying land, power and shell have become vital in the AI era. Sam Altman was blunter about scale, calling it a huge site.The timing helps SB Energy. Founded in 2019, the company is working with bankers on an IPO as soon as next month, targeting $5–7 billion. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan advised SB Energy; Morgan Stanley advised Nvidia.
What Pike County actually gets from the OpenAI data centre deal
The campus sits partly on remediated federal land at the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a former uranium-enrichment site. OpenAI expects 35,000 construction jobs across a six-year buildout through 2032, plus 2,500 permanent operating roles. It is adding $40 million to SB Energy’s existing $40 million community fund, and separately offering 84millioninCodexcredits—100 each for about 844,000 Ohio college and technical school students during the 2026-27 academic year.Power is the harder problem. The first 800 megawatts arrive in 2028 using existing AEP Ohio infrastructure. Beyond that, SB Energy and SoftBank plan at least 10 GW of new generation and $4.2 billion in regional grid upgrades, with the campus leaning on a 9.2-gigawatt natural-gas plant owned by the US government and financed by Japan under a recent trade deal. The site is expected to generate enough electricity for seven million homes.OpenAI says grid costs will not land on Ohio ratepayers, cooling will run closed-loop and air-cooled, and it will publish annual figures on hiring, water and energy use.
