Nvidia has scaled back the financing guarantee behind OpenAI’s 10-gigawatt Ohio campus from roughly $250 billion to less than $120 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on August 14, after investors raised concerns about the chipmaker’s exposure. The reduced backstop covers only the project’s first phase.
It is the first visible contraction in a financing wave that has only grown for months. Nvidia was weighing the full $250 billion guarantee as recently as late July, backstopping the lending behind a 20-year OpenAI lease because OpenAI does not turn a profit and cannot raise investment-grade debt on its own. That structure has not changed. The amount Nvidia is willing to stand behind has.
The campus itself has not shrunk. SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed developer, is building on 3,700 acres at the former Portsmouth uranium-enrichment site in Piketon, in southern Ohio, with a first phase of 800 megawatts targeted for 2028 and total costs, chips included, that could pass $500 billion. OpenAI is discussing a binding lease for the full project, and the Journal reported an agreement could come within days. The guarantee covers lease payments and construction debt, not the chips; Nvidia is separately discussing financing as much as $350 billion of the hardware that would fill the site.
What moved is the risk appetite. Shareholders pressed Nvidia over the size of its commitments and the circularity of guaranteeing debt that its customers use to buy its chips. The concern is not hypothetical bookkeeping: if the guarantee is called, Nvidia absorbs losses on infrastructure whose value depends on demand for its own products.
The cut sits oddly beside the company’s other announcement of the week. On August 10, Nvidia signed memorandums with six financial institutions to mobilize more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure, debt secured against the compute itself. Read together, the two moves point the same direction: Nvidia wants the buildout financed, and increasingly wants other balance sheets carrying it.
OpenAI has reasons to keep the project whole. The company has committed to $750 billion in compute spending through 2030, and the Ohio campus is the largest single piece announced anywhere. At full build-out its 10 gigawatts would draw roughly the power of 8 million homes.
Neither company commented, with OpenAI declining and Nvidia not responding to the Journal’s requests.
The first phase the guarantee still covers is the part with a construction date. What backs the other nine gigawatts is now an open question.
Sources: WSJ via Reuters, Crypto Briefing
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By the Control Plane Editorial Team