Nvidia has decided to provide up to $105 billion in guarantees to support OpenAI’s lease of a massive data center in Ohio being developed by SoftBank-owned SB Energy.

The Jensen Huang-led company also announced a $1.5 billion investment in SB Energy, following a $1 billion investment by OpenAI and SoftBank earlier this year to expand data center capacity.

The deal is the latest instance of Nvidia financing infrastructure built around its chips, a strategy that helps drive demand but has also raised concerns over potential circular funding between the chipmaker and its customers.

Those concerns intensified after Nvidia teamed up with six major financial institutions, including BlackRock, to launch financing platforms aimed at mobilising more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang rejected the idea that the Ohio arrangement amounts to circular financing, saying the company is leveraging its scale and long-term visibility to support the project.

"We are securing long-lived infrastructure for Nvidia compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories that can be upgraded repeatedly with each new generation delivering more intelligence and better economics," Huang said.

Nvidia will serve as the exclusive chip supplier for the facility in Pike County, Ohio. The site is planned to have total capacity of up to 8 gigawatts, with the first 800 megawatts expected to become operational in 2028. OpenAI has agreed to lease the facility for 20 years.

The project's financing structure has yet to be finalised and is expected to include equity, according to people familiar with the matter. The equity may include capital raised by a potential SB Energy IPO and Softbank direct investment, they said.

Once the equity portion is finalised, the remaining financing is expected to come through debt, potentially including project-finance loans and public debt such as bonds, the sources said.