Nvidia and OpenAI in talks for up to $250 billion dollar backstop to fund AI infrastructure plans
📰 source: cnbc_topnews · 💼 business
openai is in talks with nvidia for a backstop of up to $250 billion to fund a massive ai data center campus in ohio. the 10 gigawatt site, a former uranium-enrichment plant, could cost over $500 billion total. the backstop would cover lease and construction debt, not nvidia chips, which are under separate discussion. nvidia declined to comment; the wall street journal first reported the talks.
openai started the ai boom with chatgpt in 2022 and is racing to secure computing power as competition from anthropic, google, amazon, and meta heats up. those companies are spending hundreds of billions on ai infrastructure. in september, nvidia said it would invest up to $100 billion in openai as part of a strategic partnership, but that deal never materialized; nvidia contributed $30 billion to openai's record funding round in march instead.
softbank and sb energy are developing the ohio campus with the u.s. department of energy. openai is valued at nearly $1 trillion by private investors, but faces uncertainty from open-weight alternatives, mostly from china.
why it matters: a potential $250 billion backstop from nvidia would be a massive bet on openai's infrastructure, signaling deep confidence in ai demand.
source: cnbc_topnews
sentiment: +0.70 · impact: 0.90