Nvidia Commits $105 Billion To Back OpenAI Ohio Data Center

As Nvidia announced its $105 billion in financial support for one of the world's largest data centers in the latest of its circular deals lending money to customers who buy its products, the company's CEO, Jensen Huang, made a noteworthy statement intended to explain the investment. 

He said that AI companies are "growing faster than their balance sheets and long term credit profiles can support." That used to be a market signal that a company should rein in its borrowing. In the AI economy, that is apparently a signal for the world's largest supplier of AI chips and wealthiest corporation to lend them the money to keep going. How this ends well for the companies, their employees, lenders, investors and the public is not explained, presumably because no one really knows. JL

Kalley Huang reports in the New York Times:

Nvidia agreed to spend as much as $105 billion to back one of the world’s largest data centers, which is being built in Ohio and will be leased to OpenAI. Nvidia’s financing for the data center, that could cost as much as $500 billion, is part of the complex dealmaking behind the A.I. boom. Using unusual arrangements with chipmakers, cloud computing providers and governments, OpenAI and Anthropic are gaining access to computing power that they could not afford themselves. Many of these deals are circular, with an A.I. start-up receiving billions of dollars from technology giants before spending those billions on the same companies to pay for chips, cloud computing and other services. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, said that A.I. labs “are growing faster than their balance sheets and long-term credit profiles can support.”

Nvidia said on Monday that it had agreed to spend as much as $105 billion to back one of the world’s largest data centers, which is being built in Ohio and will be leased to OpenAI.

The sum is one of the largest from Nvidia toward supporting A.I. labs that are seeking more computing power. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said in a blog post that the company would use the money to guarantee “lease and power payments” at the site. He added that A.I. labs “are growing faster than their balance sheets and long-term credit profiles can support.”

Nvidia’s financing for the data center in Pike County, Ohio, a project that could cost as much as $500 billion, is part of the complex dealmaking behind the A.I. boom. Using unusual arrangements with chipmakers, cloud computing providers and governments, start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic are gaining access to computing power that they could not afford by themselves.

Many of these deals are circular, with an A.I. start-up receiving billions of dollars from technology giants before spending those billions on the same companies to pay for chips, cloud computing and other services. Nvidia previously invested $30 billion in OpenAI, and the data center in Ohio will use only Nvidia’s chips. Mr. Huang said in the blog post that Nvidia’s financing for the Ohio data center was not circular because “OpenAI will pay the lease.”

In turn, OpenAI said in a blog post that it would lease the Ohio site “only as completed capacity becomes available,” meaning it may not pay anything until the data center starts coming online in 2028. OpenAI agreed to a 20-year lease for the site, which will provide it eight gigawatts of computing capacity, or enough electricity to power about six million households in the United States.

Nvidia’s financing will support 4.25 of those gigawatts, though the company could extend its arrangement to the remaining gigawatts.

Nvidia and OpenAI had previously discussed the chipmaker’s providing $250 billion in financial backing for the Ohio data center.

Nvidia also said on Monday that it had agreed to invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank that will build, own and operate the data center in Ohio. Nvidia has taken other steps to finance the A.I. boom. Last week, the company and six giant asset managers, private equity firms and banks announced an effort to raise $500 billion in financing for Nvidia’s customers to pay for chips, data centers and computing power.

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)