SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed power and data center developer, has agreed to lease its planned 10-gigawatt campus in Pike County, Ohio to OpenAI for 20 years. The site sits on federal land at the Department of Energy's Portsmouth reservation, which once enriched uranium for the U.S. nuclear program, and TechCrunch reports that Nvidia is taking a $1.5 billion equity stake in the developer alongside the deal.
The lease obligates OpenAI to rental payments once the site is operational, with total rent over the term expected to reach tens of billions of dollars, according to Wall Street Journal reporting. SiliconANGLE reports the first 800 megawatts are scheduled to come online in 2028, with construction running through 2032. SB Energy owns and operates the campus throughout.
Nvidia's role goes past silicon. TechCrunch reports the company becomes the sole compute supplier for an initial 4.25 gigawatts of capacity, expandable to 8 gigawatts, and will extend up to $105 billion in credit toward the buildout. Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, said: "We are securing long-lived infrastructure for Nvidia compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories."
Generation comes first on a site this size. SB Energy plans an on-site natural gas plant that TechCrunch puts at 9.2 gigawatts and $33 billion, connected to the campus by $4.2 billion in new transmission. Construction is projected to employ 35,000 workers, with 2,500 permanent roles to follow, per SiliconANGLE.
OpenAI says the halls will use closed-loop, air-cooled cooling systems that require no water refills. That claim comes from the company; neither firm has published the power draw per rack that such a design implies, and commissioning data would settle it.
The financing keeps much of the risk on the suppliers' side of the table. SiliconANGLE describes Nvidia's credit commitment as a guarantee of up to $105 billion if the project fails, and Tom's Hardware reports, citing the Journal, that a larger guarantee of roughly $250 billion has been weighed. TechCrunch notes the arrangement extends a pattern that has drawn scrutiny over circular flows of funds, in which the chipmaker finances the customers who buy its chips.
A public listing may test the structure soon. SiliconANGLE reports SB Energy is seeking a valuation near $50 billion in an offering planned for next month.
Two dates will show whether the schedule holds: the first 800 megawatts promised for 2028, and the reported SB Energy listing. If either slips, the rent obligations and credit guarantees stop being paper commitments and start being tested ones.
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