Nvidia in talks to back OpenAI with $250 billion financing guarantee for mega data center: WSJ

Nvidia is in advanced talks to provide a staggering $250 billion financing guarantee to back OpenAI’s lease of a colossal 10-gigawatt data center campus in southern Ohio.

The monumental deal highlights an aggressive evolution in the artificial intelligence sector, with chipmakers stepping directly into the role of financial architects to fund unprecedented infrastructure demands.

Developed by SoftBank Group’s energy subsidiary in southern Ohio, the planned mega-campus will require 10 gigawatts of power, equivalent to powering several million homes.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Total project costs, including infrastructure and hardware, are projected to reach roughly $500 billion.

The site's vital power allocation is tied to U.S. government oversight and a separate funding agreement backed by Japan. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been closely involved in power distribution discussions, as tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic also vie for energy access.

The report said, OpenAI, which has been in advanced talks for several weeks to lease the site, is among the companies showing the strongest interest in the project, while Anthropic, Microsoft and Google, opens new tab have also spoken to Lutnick in recent weeks.

As AI labs race toward public offerings and scale up projections—with OpenAI pushing expected compute spending toward $750 billion through 2030—the partnership signals a shifting paradigm.

Negotiations remain ongoing, and formal terms have yet to be finalized as OpenAI, and Nvidia have not responded to the WSJ report yet.