Key points
- The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Nvidia (NVDA) is in talks to guarantee about $250B of OpenAI financing.
- That guarantee covers lease and construction costs. Chips are a separate arrangement worth about $350B.
- The site is a 10 gigawatt campus in southern Ohio built by SoftBank's SB Energy, more than $500B all in.
- Nvidia's earlier plan was up to $100B of equity. What actually closed in February was $30B.
Update, Aug. 19, 2026. The agreement was signed on Aug. 17 at a smaller figure and a different structure than the talks described below. Nvidia's Form 8-K puts its aggregate payment obligation at a cap of $105 billion under residual value guaranties covering about 4.25 gigawatts, triggered only by OpenAI insolvency or missed lease payments, rather than the $250 billion guarantee reported in July. See our coverage of the signed agreement and how the exposure compares to Lucent in 1999.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday evening that Nvidia (NVDA) is in talks to provide a financial guarantee of about $250 billion for OpenAI. The money would cover lease and construction financing on a data center campus in southern Ohio.
It wouldn't cover chips. Those are a separate discussion. The Journal reported Nvidia is also weighing a financing arrangement for OpenAI's chip purchases that could come to about $350 billion.
The report cites people familiar with the matter. Terms aren't final, and the talks could still fall apart. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report. Neither company commented.
What the Ohio site is
The campus is a 10 gigawatt project in southern Ohio, developed by SB Energy, the energy arm of SoftBank, on Department of Energy land at a former uranium enrichment site. Building it would cost more than $500 billion including chips. The first phase is 800 megawatts and targets 2028.
SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son announced the campus in March. "As a single-location investment, this will be the largest in human history and will be bigger than all existing AI data centers combined," he said.
OpenAI would lease the campus rather than own it. The Information first reported the lease talks on June 9, and said then that Nvidia was expected to guarantee both OpenAI's lease and SB Energy's project financing. Sunday's report put a number on it.
The earlier plan was equity, and it got smaller
In September 2025 Nvidia and OpenAI announced a letter of intent to deploy 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. Nvidia said it intended to invest up to $100 billion, released as each gigawatt came online.
That structure didn't hold. Two months later Nvidia put the risk in its quarterly filing. "There is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity or other potential investments, or that any investment will be completed on expected terms," the filing said. Chief financial officer Colette Kress told the UBS Global Technology and AI Conference the same thing. "We still haven't completed a definitive agreement," she said.
What closed was smaller. On February 27 OpenAI announced a $110 billion round at a $730 billion pre-money valuation. Amazon (AMZN) put in $50 billion, Nvidia $30 billion and SoftBank $30 billion. Nvidia's piece was a direct stake, not the milestone-linked structure from September.
A week later Jensen Huang told the Morgan Stanley technology conference that the $30 billion "might be the last" investment Nvidia makes in OpenAI before it goes public. He said the original $100 billion was "probably not in the cards." Nvidia has described its stakes as "focused very squarely, strategically on expanding and deepening our ecosystem reach."
The November filing flagged the same uncertainty over a planned $10 billion investment in Anthropic and a $5 billion commitment to Intel (INTC).
A guarantee is not an investment
The two are different instruments. An equity investment moves cash out the door and buys a stake. A guarantee moves no cash up front and takes on somebody else's obligation instead. If OpenAI couldn't make its payments, the lenders would look to Nvidia.
Here is how the reported pieces stack up.
| Commitment | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Lease and construction guarantee, Ohio | About $250B | In talks, reported July 26 |
| Chip purchase financing | About $350B | Separate discussion |
| Equity in OpenAI, as announced | Up to $100B | Sept 2025 letter of intent, superseded |
| Equity in OpenAI, as closed | $30B | Part of a $110B round, Feb 2026 |
| Investment in Anthropic | $10B | Announced Nov 2025 |
| Commitment to Intel | $5B | Flagged as uncertain in the Nov filing |
The circular financing question
Nvidia sells the chips. Under these arrangements it would also stand behind the customer buying them and the financing for the landlord housing them. Coverage of the talks raised the question of circular financing, where the companies driving AI growth also underwrite one another's commitments.
We covered that structure on July 20 in our explainer on how these deals loop back on each other. Michael Burry pointed readers at a Bank for International Settlements paper on poorly disclosed AI deals this weekend.
What happens Monday
Markets were closed when the report landed. Index futures reopened Sunday at 6 p.m. ET, and the first cash session that can respond is Monday.
A build of this size runs on borrowed money, and the cost of that money moves with interest rates. The Federal Reserve announces its decision Wednesday, with traders putting the odds of an increase at 38 percent. Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META) report after Wednesday's close, with Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) on Thursday.
Figures are as reported Sunday, July 26, 2026. The talks are unconfirmed and terms are not final. Nothing here is investment advice.
