OpenAI will lease for 20 years a 10-gigawatt (GW) artificial intelligence (AI) data centre campus being built in the U.S. state of Ohio. Nvidia will invest $1.5 billion in the project and will also take on rent guarantees of up to $105 billion.

Multiple foreign media outlets including SiliconANGLE reported on Aug. 17 that the campus is being developed by SB Energy, a SoftBank Group unit, which will also own and operate it after completion. The site is at the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant in Pike County, Ohio, where uranium for U.S. nuclear weapons and Navy submarines was processed during the Cold War. Redevelopment is under way on a mix of private and federal land, including property owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. The two sides call the campus “PORTS-Pike.”

OpenAI will secure about 8 GW of IT capacity at the site. 1 GW is enough to supply electricity to about 750,000 U.S. households.

Nvidia became an SB Energy shareholder alongside SoftBank Group and OpenAI through this investment. It will also exclusively supply AI computing infrastructure at the site, and the campus will run only on Nvidia’s DSX platform, which bundles graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs) and networking. Nvidia will provide credit support for land, power and building shell work equivalent to an initial 4.25 GW of capacity, and it also secured an option for the remaining 3.75 GW.

A notable part of the contract structure is a loss-compensation clause. If OpenAI withdraws its lease and SB Energy has to sell the site because it cannot find another tenant, Nvidia will cover the value difference up to a limit of $105 billion. The clause is also included in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (젠슨 황) said, “In the AI era, land, power and building shells have become core assets.” He said it was about securing long-term infrastructure so OpenAI can repeatedly upgrade an “AI factory” to higher intelligence and better economics as generations change. In a blog post, he forecast that OpenAI would spend about $600 billion on Nvidia chip-based computing capacity by 2030. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (샘 알트먼) said the project would provide AI access to “millions of people” across various tasks “from new drug development to startups.”

Power is the key issue. SB Energy and SoftBank Group plan to build at least 10 GW of new generation capacity to create 8 GW of IT capacity, and to invest at least $4.2 billion with AEP Ohio in the local transmission and distribution network. A $33 billion natural gas power plant with 9.2 GW capacity will be built on the site. BloombergNEF said the cost of building natural gas plants has risen 66 percent over the past two years. Some projections also say that as the plant nears completion it will compete for natural gas with export markets, potentially tripling gas prices in some regions.

Construction will proceed in stages. The first 800 megawatts (MW) is set to start operating in 2028 using existing AEP facilities, while later phases will require new power plants including natural gas generation. OpenAI will directly bear power and infrastructure costs, and SB Energy pledged not to pass the cost of expanding the transmission network on to other Ohio electricity consumers. For cooling, it will use a closed-loop air-cooling system that circulates water in cooling towers to cut water consumption. OpenAI said that after the initial filling, usage will remain at office-building levels.

Local economic effects are also being highlighted. Construction will continue through 2032 and is expected to create about 35,000 construction jobs and about 2,500 long-term operating jobs. A memorandum of understanding was signed with North America’s construction unions. OpenAI added $40 million to a $40 million local fund created by SB Energy, bringing it to $80 million, and will provide Codex credits worth up to $84 million, at $100 per person, to about 844,000 Ohio university and college students in the 2026 to 2027 academic year. Total support, including these items, will exceed $160 million.

For Nvidia, the point at which it recoups its investment could come before completion. SB Energy is said to be seeking an initial public offering as early as next month, targeting a valuation of up to $50 billion. The investment follows a move in January by OpenAI and SoftBank Group to put $1 billion into supporting the Stargate project. Nvidia also launched a computing finance platform last week with six major financial institutions targeting more than $500 billion in external funding.

Still, Nvidia’s approach of directly funding infrastructure that will use its own chips is also raising controversy over circular investment with customers, alongside the effect of boosting demand. The project shows that large AI data centres are expanding beyond simple leasing into structures that bundle power, chip supply and financial guarantees. OpenAI secured long-term computing infrastructure, SB Energy secured large power assets and operating rights, and Nvidia has moved beyond being a chip supplier to become an investor and the party responsible for loss compensation.