Nvidia Is Investing Billions to Become the Sole Chip Supplier for OpenAI's Giant New Ohio Data Center

Nvidia said on August 17, 2026 that it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a company that builds data centers and is backed by SoftBank and OpenAI. The deal makes Nvidia the only supplier of computer chips and hardware at a huge new data center OpenAI plans to build near Cincinnati, Ohio. Nvidia will also provide up to $105 billion in credit to help pay for construction. In return, Nvidia gets access to up to 8 gigawatts of computing capacity at the site — enough electricity to power roughly eight nuclear reactors TechCrunch Reuters.

A data center is a large building filled with powerful computers that run artificial intelligence software. The more advanced the AI, the more computing power and electricity it needs.

SB Energy will build a natural gas power plant on the site to generate 9.2 gigawatts of electricity. The land is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and was once used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and Navy submarines. The power plant alone is expected to cost $33 billion TechCrunch.

The Ohio facility, called Ports-Pike, is designed to start at 4.25 gigawatts and grow to 8 gigawatts over time. It is part of a larger project called Stargate, a joint effort by SoftBank and OpenAI to spend $500 billion over four years building AI infrastructure around the world. Each company put in $19 billion to start Reuters SoftBank. In September 2025, OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank announced five new U.S. data center sites under the Stargate project, with over $400 billion planned over three years SoftBank Reuters. The project also extends internationally, including Stargate UAE, which aims to provide 5 gigawatts of AI data center capacity powered by nuclear, solar, and other energy sources SoftBank.

Before this deal was finalized, reports suggested Nvidia was considering investing as much as $3 billion in SB Energy and providing around $250 billion in financial backing for OpenAI to lease the Ohio project The Information WSJ. SoftBank separately committed $3 billion to an Ohio factory tied to an OpenAI data center Reuters and announced a $22.5 billion investment in OpenAI in August 2025 SoftBank. To help fund these AI investments, SoftBank sold its entire stake in Nvidia — $5.8 billion in stock — in November 2025 CNBC.

Nvidia and OpenAI also formalized a partnership in September 2025 to deploy 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. Under that agreement, Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI over time, releasing funds as each gigawatt of computing capacity comes online Nvidia.

The broader context here is the unusual flow of money among the companies involved. SoftBank sold its Nvidia shares to fund AI projects like Stargate and OpenAI. Now Nvidia is investing in SB Energy and lending billions to OpenAI — effectively recycling the same money through a circle of companies that all depend on each other. By acting as both the hardware seller and the lender of last resort for its biggest customers, Nvidia is taking on a lot of financial risk on its own balance sheet.

Choosing natural gas to power the data center also carries uncertainty. The cost of building natural gas power plants has risen 66% in the last two years, according to BloombergNEF TechCrunch. Some forecasts suggest that new gas plants and export markets could triple natural gas prices in parts of the United States TechCrunch. Committing tens of billions of dollars to gas-fired power locks operators into fuel prices that may not behave as expected.

The Ohio site adds another layer of difficulty. Building a massive data center and power plant on former nuclear weapons land means dealing with extra regulations, environmental reviews, security clearances, and federal land-use negotiations that a typical construction project would not face.

The demand for AI computing power at this scale is real. The technology industry has been through major infrastructure buildouts before, including the shift to cloud computing in the 2010s and the nationwide mobile network expansion before that. What is different now is how tightly everything is connected — a small group of companies owns the chips, the buildings, the power plants, and the AI software itself. The Ports-Pike project will be an early test of whether that concentrated model can actually deliver on its enormous promises.