Nvidia and OpenAI Team Up to Build the Largest AI Data Center

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, will lease the world's largest artificial intelligence (AI) data center in Ohio for 20 years. U.S. chipmaker Nvidia has committed to providing up to $105 billion in funding, according to a securities filing released Monday. The facility is scheduled to begin operations in 2028.

Nvidia will be the exclusive supplier of chips, OpenAI will be the primary customer for computing power for the next twenty years, and SB Energy—a company founded in 2019 within the Japanese SoftBank Group—will own the facility.

The project is partly planned for a former Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant. Named “PORTS-Pike,” the data center—currently under construction—is expected to house more than 1.5 million chips and provide a colossal 8 gigawatts of computing power by 2032.

The electrical power for this mega data center will be supplied primarily by a new gas-fired power plant and is expected to be equivalent to the power needed to supply approximately six million American households, according to The New York Times.

“It will be a massive facility, with enough computing power to help millions of people use AI to do things we're just beginning to imagine—from discovering new drugs to starting businesses,” said Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.

This site alone would have computing capacity equivalent to the entire Stargate program—a $500 billion, multi-site project unveiled with great fanfare at the White House in early 2025 by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle.

Circular financing?

The agreement between Nvidia and OpenAI is part of a growing trend in which AI leaders, despite their skyrocketing revenues, rely on contracts with their own suppliers to build the massive infrastructure needed for this technological revolution, according to AFP.

This interdependence between the world's leading supplier of AI chips and one of its major customers is fueling fears of an AI bubble. However, Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, defended himself on Monday in a rare blog post: “Is this circular financing? No. OpenAI will pay its rent.”

Nvidia also plans to invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, the Financial Times reports.

This is the largest guarantee Nvidia has ever provided. It covers both the loans needed for construction and the rent payments. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia had initially considered increasing its guarantee to $250 billion. But the news, revealed in late July, “had worried investors about the chipmaker's risk exposure” and caused its stock to drop 5% on the New York Stock Exchange.

The project is expected to create 35,000 construction jobs over the six years of construction, through 2032, and 2,500 permanent jobs, according to OpenAI's website. The AI company will invest $40 million in a community grant fund supporting priorities set by local residents.

These promises are a response to growing hostility toward data centers. According to a Gallup poll from last March, 71% of Americans oppose their construction near their homes. Furthermore, the issue of rising electricity bills—attributed in part to these water- and electricity-intensive facilities—has become a topic of debate in the midterm elections.

OpenAI and its landlord, SB Energy—a subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank—assure that the data center will cover its own energy and infrastructure costs without passing them on to residents.