OpenAI wants its biggest data center yet, and Nvidia would back the bill
OpenAI is negotiating to lease a planned 10-gigawatt data center in Ohio that could be financially backed by Nvidia, according to The Information.
The site is being built on federal land in southern Ohio and developed by SB Energy, which is majority-owned by OpenAI investor SoftBank. At full buildout, costs would reach at least $500 billion. OpenAI would sign a 20-year lease, its largest infrastructure commitment to date. Nvidia would serve as guarantor for both the lease and project financing, backing the payments with its balance sheet. That kind of financial guarantee would be new territory for the chipmaker at this scale. The project echoes the Stargate initiative announced at the White House in January 2025 with Oracle and SoftBank, which ultimately made little progress. The first phase at 800 megawatts is expected by 2028. The site previously housed a uranium enrichment facility in Pike County. Negotiations are still ongoing, and plans could change. On Monday, OpenAI confidentially filed paperwork for an IPO.AdDEC_D_Incontent-1Ad TopStories Microsoft researcher builds a working neural network out of goats in Age of Empires II to critique AI science Amazon and five other companies reportedly triggered the government crackdown on Anthropic’s Fable model KPMG fabricated AI case studies in a report designed to sell clients on AI adoption Microsoft’s Copilot Cowork moves to usage-based billing and may tap DeepSeek Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 closes in on closed-source leaders in coding marathons Don’t MissWhat Matters Stay in the loop on AI. Clear, useful, no fluff. Follow The Decoder for AI news, background stories and expert analyses.
