OpenAI has signed the largest data center lease announced to date in Ohio, with Nvidia backing the deal with a guarantee of up to $105 billion—marking a shift away from chip scarcity toward power and infrastructure as the main constraint in AI expansion.
The arrangement highlights how major tech companies have accumulated roughly $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI infrastructure commitments that are nearly impossible to cancel, raising questions about how investors assess their true financial exposure.
What happened
OpenAI signed a 20-year lease with SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy for the "PORTS-Pike" campus in Ohio, providing around 8 gigawatts of IT capacity. Nvidia is guaranteeing up to $105 billion in residual value for the first construction phase (4.25 gigawatts) and investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy in exchange for exclusive chip supplier rights on the first half of the site.
Why it matters
The deal reflects a fundamental shift in AI infrastructure constraints—Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls land, power, and physical space ("LPS") the new bottleneck, not chips. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that nine major tech companies (including Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia) hold around $3 trillion in mostly AI-related obligations that don't appear on balance sheets, making it harder for investors to gauge actual debt levels.
What to watch
The first 800 megawatts are slated to come online in 2028. Huang projects 1.5 million GPUs per system generation worth $150 to $200 billion in revenue; if Nvidia exercises its option on the remaining 3.75 gigawatts in Ohio, the total commitment grows to roughly 16 gigawatts worth roughly $600 billion.
Ask the AI about this article →
The Ohio data center deal signals a critical transition in how AI infrastructure constraints are perceived. For years, the bottleneck in artificial intelligence expansion centered on chip availability and production capacity. Now, as Huang frames it through the "LPS" acronym, the limiting factors have shifted to the physical fundamentals: securing land with sufficient power supply and constructing the buildings themselves. This shift matters because it explains why Nvidia is willing to stake $105 billion on residual asset value rather than on chip sales alone.
The broader context the Wall Street Journal uncovered—that nine tech companies hold $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI commitments—underscores how rapidly these infrastructure buildouts have outpaced traditional corporate financing models. Leases and purchase commitments don't appear on balance sheets until payments begin or goods are delivered. This opacity has grown sharply: leases not yet started jumped to $1.2 trillion (four times the prior year), and Alphabet's purchase commitments alone nearly tripled in three months, from $332 billion to $811 billion. For investors accustomed to parsing balance sheets, this hidden debt load makes it harder to assess the true financial health and leverage of major technology firms.
For example, today's edition would include:
AI-summarized, only the topics you pick — one digest a day via Email, Slack, or Discord.
Free · takes 30 seconds · unsubscribe anytimeWhat is AIToday? →
Ask AI anything about this article. Q&As are published on this page for other readers too.
Visko raised $10 million in pre-seed funding from Llama Ventures and opened public access to its first foundat…
U.S. markets ended August higher, with the S&P 500 up 2.6% and the Nasdaq up 3.9%
Neurovia AI, an Abu Dhabi-based company, is pitching Saudi security agencies software that it says can compres…
AI company Runway has unveiled Solaris, the first model in a new category it calls "Interface World Models." I…
John Deere introduced JD, a conversational AI tool that lets farmers ask open-ended questions about their hist…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Fox Business that AI is creating 'hundreds of thousands' of jobs, including in…
