Nvidia's reported $250B OpenAI backstop still hinges on power and a tenant

The campus needs a tenant and government-controlled power

The Ohio site is not presented as OpenAI’s exclusively. The report says the U.S. government controls the project’s power and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in deciding who receives it. OpenAI has been in advanced lease discussions for several weeks, the people said, but Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken with Lutnick about the site.

That makes the project a contest for a scarce, government-involved energy allocation as well as a real-estate and financing transaction. A headline guarantee would not by itself settle either the tenant choice or the power decision.

The physical plan is also much broader than a warehouse of chips. The Department of Energy fact sheet says an SB Energy-affiliated entity is leasing land at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, Ohio, for the campus. It describes SoftBank Group and SB Energy’s plan for 10GW of new generation—at least 9.2GW of it natural gas—to support 10GW of data-center development.

SB Energy and AEP Ohio have partnered on $4.2B in transmission infrastructure, which SB Energy committed to pay for, according to the department. The department also says the project will use new 765-kilovolt transmission lines and four substations, and that SB Energy committed to a $40M community-benefits agreement and accelerated cleanup at the former uranium-enrichment site. Those are commitments and plans in a government fact sheet, rather than evidence that the full system is operating.

The initial milestone is materially smaller. The secondary report says the first phase is expected to deliver about 800MW in 2028. Against the proposed 10GW total, that is 8%—a simple 800MW ÷ 10,000MW comparison—not a measure of financing progress or a forecast of when the remaining capacity will arrive.

Why Nvidia has a stake beyond a single sale

Nvidia and OpenAI already have a stated infrastructure relationship. In September 2025, the companies announced a letter of intent to deploy at least 10GW of Nvidia systems for OpenAI’s next-generation AI infrastructure. Nvidia said it intended to invest up to $100B progressively as each gigawatt was deployed, and OpenAI said Nvidia would be its preferred strategic compute and networking partner.

That announcement also set a first 1GW phase for the second half of 2026 on Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform and said the parties expected to finalize the new phase of their partnership in the following weeks. It was an announced intent, not proof that its full 10GW or $100B target had been executed. The reported Ohio guarantee would add a different type of exposure: potential credit support for infrastructure a prospective Nvidia customer would use.

SoftBank’s role is similarly more than incidental. In OpenAI’s January 2025 Stargate announcement, the companies said SoftBank would have financial responsibility while OpenAI would have operational responsibility; Masayoshi Son of SoftBank was named Stargate chairman. The Ohio project has not been identified in the retained reporting as a finalized Stargate commitment, but the earlier division of roles helps explain why SoftBank’s energy subsidiary is developing a power-and-data-center project while OpenAI is considering a lease.

What would turn the proposal into a project?

The next evidence is contractual and operational rather than another headline number: a signed OpenAI lease, defined guarantee terms, a debt package, an actual power allocation and progress on the first 800MW phase. The answers would show whether Nvidia is merely discussing support for a strategically important buyer or accepting a defined financial obligation tied to that buyer’s demand for its systems.

Until then, the $250B figure is best understood as a report about negotiations around a proposed campus whose financing, power and eventual tenant remain unresolved.