Remember when your parents had to cosign your first apartment lease because you had zero credit history and a part-time job at the mall? OpenAI just did that, except the apartment is a 10-gigawatt data center in Ohio and the cosigner is the most valuable company on Earth.
The Backstop Heard Round Wall Street
Nvidia is reportedly in talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion in financing so OpenAI can lease a massive campus in southern Ohio being built by SoftBank's energy subsidiary. The arrangement is straightforward in a way that should still make you blink: if OpenAI can't make its lease or debt payments, Nvidia steps in and covers it. OpenAI keeps the building; Nvidia eats the risk.
The guarantee covers the lease and construction financing only — it doesn't include the actual Nvidia chips going inside the facility, which are reportedly the subject of a separate $350 billion financing conversation. Add it up and the total project, chips included, could top $500 billion. The first 800-megawatt phase is targeted for 2028.
Why a Trillion-Dollar Company Needs a Cosigner
Here's the part that should raise eyebrows: this backstop exists specifically because OpenAI carries a non-investment-grade credit profile, and lenders were getting nervous about handing over quarter-trillion-dollar sums to a company that, however hyped, still isn't consistently profitable. Nvidia's guarantee is the financial equivalent of a co-sign that makes the whole thing bankable.
The move also reveals something sharper about Nvidia's strategy: it isn't just selling shovels in this gold rush anymore, it's now financing the mine. Every dollar Nvidia backstops flows toward more GPU purchases — which flow right back to Nvidia. That's not a conflict of interest so much as a closed loop with a $250 billion price tag.
When your chip supplier also becomes your landlord's insurance policy, you've entered a new kind of vertical integration — one paid for entirely in circular billions.
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Source: Tom's Hardware