Nvidia's Ohio AI Deal With OpenAI: Is Its Exposure $3B, $100B or $105B?

3 min readPublished 25 Aug 2026

Nvidia is negotiating an investment of up to $3 billion in SB Energy, the SoftBank subsidiary building a massive OpenAI data center campus in Pike County, Ohio. That much, three outlets agree on. What they do not agree on is how big Nvidia’s total exposure to the project actually is — and the reported figures for that broader commitment range from $100 billion to $250 billion, depending on which outlet and which day.

What is confirmed: a $3 billion tranche investment

CNBC reported that Nvidia is in talks to invest as much as $3 billion in SB Energy, structured so that half is paid when the Ohio project deal is signed and the other half arrives alongside SB Energy’s planned initial public offering. The Information reported the same $3 billion figure independently, describing SB Energy as the developer of a large planned Ohio data center project for OpenAI. Crypto Briefing‘s first article on the story, published August 17, 2026, matched that structure, describing two $1.5 billion tranches — one at signing, one tied to the IPO.

All three outlets place the project in Pike County, Ohio, under SB Energy’s development umbrella within SoftBank.

Where the numbers diverge

Beyond the $3 billion equity figure, the reporting splits. CNBC described the talks as including roughly $100 billion in credit support from Nvidia for the Ohio campus. Crypto Briefing‘s first article described an initial guarantee figure of roughly $250 billion for OpenAI’s leasing capacity at the facility, which it said had since been reworked to under $120 billion. Crypto Briefing’s second article, published the same day and citing Reuters, reported a different number again: Nvidia has agreed to guarantee as much as $105 billion in lease payments tied to the project.

It is not established in the available reporting whether the $100 billion, $120 billion and $105 billion figures describe the same evolving guarantee at different points in negotiation, or distinct components of the deal. No outlet in this evidence set reconciles them directly.

One outlet, two headlines, three hours apart

The clearest sign of how unsettled this reporting is comes from Crypto Briefing itself. Its first article, published at 12:47 UTC on August 17, 2026, led with the $3 billion SB Energy investment and cited a total project cost that could surpass $500 billion if the full campus is built. Its second article, published at 15:42 UTC the same day and attributed to Reuters, led instead with a $105 billion commitment figure and added an unrelated $500 billion number — a target for third-party funding across Nvidia’s separate financing partnership with six financial institutions announced the week prior. The two $500 billion figures describe different things entirely, and the outlet’s own headlines moved from a $3 billion framing to a $105 billion framing within hours.

Details found only in the later report

Crypto Briefing’s second article, citing Reuters, adds specifics not found elsewhere in this evidence: SB Energy will build, own and operate the campus for OpenAI under a 20-year lease; the project’s initial phase will provide 4.25 gigawatts of capacity, with Nvidia securing up to 8 gigawatts and holding an option on the remaining 3.75 gigawatts; SoftBank and SB Energy plan at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation and a $4.2 billion investment in regional grid infrastructure with AEP Ohio; OpenAI said the project should create about 35,000 construction jobs through 2032 and roughly 2,500 permanent operating jobs; and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said OpenAI’s Nvidia chip spending is expected to represent about $600 billion of computing capacity through 2030. The same article notes a prior $1 billion commitment from OpenAI and SoftBank to SB Energy in January. None of these figures appear in CNBC’s or The Information’s reporting as summarized here.

What remains unresolved

CNBC and The Information both frame the arrangement as still in talks, not finalized. It is unclear from this reporting whether the deal has since closed. The relationship between the $100 billion, $120 billion, $105 billion and $250 billion figures — whether sequential revisions of one number or separate deal components — has not been clarified by any outlet in this evidence set. Nor is it clear how the 8-gigawatt, 10-gigawatt and 4.25-gigawatt capacity figures map onto the different dollar totals.

Why it matters

If accurate, this would be among the largest financing structures yet disclosed in the AI infrastructure buildout, tying Nvidia’s balance sheet to OpenAI’s compute ambitions through a SoftBank-controlled vehicle. But the inconsistency in reported figures — including within a single outlet’s coverage on a single day — means readers should treat the guarantee totals as unsettled rather than as a confirmed number.