2026-08-17Binding↻ Circular
Nvidia (Financier) · OpenAI (Buyer) · SB Energy (Developer)
- Value
- up to $105B
- Capacity / term
- 4.25 GW · 20y
- $1.24M per MW-year
- First revenue
- 2028
Surfaced via the EDGAR watchlist hit on Nvidia's 8-K filed 2026-08-17. This formalizes and supersedes the reported-only nvidia-openai-backstop-talks-2026-07 row (WSJ/CNBC talks reported 2026-07-27 of a speculative up-to-$250B backstop for a rumored 10GW campus); the signed terms differ materially ($105B not $250B; 4.25GW initial plus an unquantified 3.8GW discretionary option, not a flat 10GW; a specific 20-year OpenAI lease rather than open-ended talks), so that row's status was changed to superseded rather than deleted or merged. The single largest binding row on the ledger by guarantee ceiling. Scale check: Nvidia's own $500B multi-year compute-financing framework (nvidia-compute-financing-platforms-2026-08, announced 8-10) and its reported $250B-scale backstop talks for this same project (7-27) both preceded this at similar or larger magnitude, so $105B as the final signed number is consistent with, not an outlier against, Nvidia's disclosed scale of activity this cycle. Arithmetic check: $105B / 4.25GW = ~$24.7M per MW over the full 20-year guarantee horizon, i.e. ~$1.24M/MW/year, which sits inside the ledger's $200k-$20M/MW/year sanity band (this is a guarantee ceiling amortized over the lease term, not a services price, so it is compared loosely rather than treated as a strict services rate). Cross-source: SEC 8-K (primary) plus independent CNBC and Bloomberg reporting (tier-1), both citing the same $105B/4.25GW figures; earlier $250B/$120B figures circulating 7-27 through 8-14 were pre-signing negotiation leaks per WSJ and are explicitly superseded by the SEC-filed number.
Conditions: Nvidia entered residual value guaranties with SB Energy covering leases for approximately 4.25 GW of IT load at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus (the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant) in Pike County, Ohio, capped at $105B in aggregate; payments trigger only if OpenAI, the 20-year tenant, defaults or becomes insolvent, so the $105B is a contingent guarantee ceiling, not a committed cash outlay. Nvidia can extend further credit support to roughly 3.8 additional GW at its sole discretion (unquantified in dollars, not included in this row's value); full campus is planned at up to 8 GW by decade's end. Alongside the guaranty, Nvidia is investing $1.5B in direct equity in SB Energy (joining existing investors SoftBank Group and OpenAI); separately, SoftBank/SB Energy have committed $4.2B to regional grid infrastructure. Neither the $1.5B equity stake nor the $4.2B grid commitment is included in this row's value, which covers the lease-guarantee instrument only. First 800MW of capacity targeted online in 2028 (year-precision only; no specific month disclosed). Circular by construction: Nvidia guarantees the lease, invests equity in the landlord, and is the exclusive chip supplier hosted on the campus.
2026-08-10FrameworkSnapshot, not summed↻ Circular
Nvidia (Financier) · Apollo Global Management (Financier) · BlackRock (Financier) · Blackstone (Financier) · Brookfield Asset Management (Financier) · Goldman Sachs (Financier) · KKR (Financier)
- Value
- at least $500B
- Capacity / term
- n/a
- First revenue
- not disclosed
PROGRAM ENVELOPE / FRAMEWORK, excluded from binding aggregates: same anti-double-counting treatment as the January 2025 Stargate framework row. Discrete projects that sign under this financing platform should get their own rows (expansion_of this one where the provider or financier chain matches). Distinct from the separate, still-unverified Nvidia-SK Hynix ~$500B letter of intent (data-center investment plus HBM4 memory supply) sitting in candidates.json; do not conflate the two despite the matching headline figure. Circular by construction: Nvidia is both an enabler of the financing and the hardware vendor the mobilized capital ultimately buys from.
Conditions: Structured as MOUs establishing 'AI Compute Infrastructure Financing Platforms' with six asset managers, intended to mobilize over $500B of third-party capital for data centers, power and Nvidia hardware, off Nvidia's own balance sheet. Nvidia is reported to be guaranteeing residual value on the Nvidia GPUs used as collateral. No specific site, project or binding capital commitment is named; this is a formal Nvidia-initiated framework, not reported talks.
Read our coverage →
2026-07-27Superseded↻ Circular
Nvidia (Financier) · OpenAI (Buyer) · SB Energy (Developer)
- Value
- up to $250B
- Capacity / term
- 10 GW
- First revenue
- not disclosed
SUPERSEDED, excluded from binding aggregates: Nvidia in talks to guarantee up to $250B of financing so OpenAI can lease the SoftBank-subsidiary SB Energy 10 GW Ohio campus. Circular by construction: the guarantor's chips are the campus's payload. Nvidia fell 5% on the report. UPDATE 2026-08-17: the talks formalized into a signed SEC-disclosed deal with materially different terms ($105B guarantee ceiling, not $250B; 4.25GW initial with an unquantified 3.8GW discretionary option, not a flat 10GW) -- see nvidia-openai-sb-energy-ohio-2026-08, which is the binding row going forward. This row is kept, not deleted, as the on-record history of the reported negotiating range.
Conditions: Early talks per WSJ reporting; nothing signed. Backstop would cover lease and construction financing so OpenAI can lease a planned $500B, 10 GW SB Energy campus in Pike County, Ohio (800 MW first phase targeted 2028). Parallel talks reportedly cover up to $350B of chip financing.
Read our coverage →
2025-11-18Binding↻ Circular
Microsoft (Financier) · Nvidia (Financier) · Anthropic (Buyer)
- Value
- up to $15B
- Capacity / term
- n/a
- First revenue
- not disclosed
Compute-linked equity: Microsoft (up to $5B) and Nvidia (up to $10B) investing in Anthropic alongside Anthropic's $30B-plus Azure purchase commitment (anthropic-azure-commitment-2025-11). The investments reportedly lifted Anthropic's valuation to around $350B. Circular by definition: suppliers funding their own customer.
Conditions: Combined figure: Microsoft up to $5B and Nvidia up to $10B, staged investments announced as part of the Azure compute alliance.
Read our coverage →
2025-09-22LOI / MOU↻ Circular
Nvidia (Financier) · OpenAI (Buyer)
- Value
- up to $100B
- Capacity / term
- 10 GW
- First revenue
- 2026
NON-BINDING, excluded from binding aggregates: LOI for Nvidia to invest up to $100B in OpenAI, staged as each gigawatt of at least 10 GW of Nvidia systems deploys. The archetypal circular AI deal: the investor is the chip supplier whose systems the investment buys. Context for the July 2026 backstop talks (nvidia-openai-backstop-talks-2026-07).
Conditions: Letter of intent, not a definitive agreement: investment staged progressively as each gigawatt of at least 10 GW of Nvidia systems is deployed. First gigawatt targeted for H2 2026 on the Vera Rubin platform.
Read our coverage →