OpenAI: The AI Deal Record

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

Sources

[1] primary[2] tier-1[3] tier-1[4] other

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not a flat 10GW; a specific 20-year OpenAI lease rather than open-ended talks), so that row's status was changed to superseded rather than deleted or merged.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earlier $250B/$120B figures circulating 7-27 through 8-14 were pre-signing negotiation leaks per WSJ and are explicitly superseded by the SEC-filed number.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.

Nvidia (Financier) · OpenAI (Buyer) · SB Energy (Developer)

Value

up to $250B

Capacity / term

10 GW

First revenue

not disclosed

Sources

[1] tier-1[2] other

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.

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CoreWeave (Provider) · OpenAI (Buyer)

Value

up to $6.5B

Capacity / term

n/a

First revenue

not disclosed

Sources

[1] primary[2] tier-1

Expansion of the March 2025 agreement by up to $6.5B, taking the cumulative CoreWeave-OpenAI contract value to roughly $22.4B per CoreWeave (a figure that includes a reported May 2025 expansion of up to $4B still sitting in the candidate queue). Circular flag inherited from the parent agreement's cross-shareholding.

Nvidia (Financier) · OpenAI (Buyer)

Value

up to $100B

Capacity / term

10 GW

First revenue

2026

Sources

[1] primary[2] primary[3] other

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.

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Oracle (Provider) · OpenAI (Buyer)

Value

$300B

Capacity / term

4.5 GW · 5y

$13.33M per MW-year

First revenue

2027

Sources

[1] tier-1[2] tier-1[3] primary[4] tier-1[5] other

The largest verified compute contract on record: OpenAI to purchase $300B of computing power from Oracle over roughly five years starting 2027, part of the Stargate program, delivered from about 4.5 GW of capacity per the July 2025 Oracle-OpenAI development agreement (Bloomberg). Corroborated by Oracle's own FY26 Q1 release the day before the WSJ report: RPO up 359% to $455B on 'four multi-billion-dollar contracts with three different customers'. Held in the candidate queue at ledger launch until a primary source and two tier-1 URLs were captured; promoted the same day.

Conditions: Neither company has press-released the $300B figure; it was reported by WSJ on 2025-09-10 and subsequently confirmed by OpenAI per CNBC. March 2026: the planned 600 MW Abilene flagship expansion was scrapped after financing talks stalled (Bloomberg), with capacity redistributed across other sites; the 4.5 GW program and the contract itself remained in effect per the same reporting.

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CoreWeave (Provider) · OpenAI (Buyer)

Value

up to $4B

Capacity / term

n/a

First revenue

not disclosed

Sources

[1] tier-1[2] other

The middle link of the CoreWeave-OpenAI chain: up to $4B of additional capacity through 2029, disclosed at Q1 2025 earnings, between the March initial agreement (up to $11.9B) and the September expansion (up to $6.5B). Promoted from the candidate queue on 2026-08-03 once the Bloomberg capture pinned the date. Circular flag inherited from the parent agreement's cross-shareholding.

Conditions: OpenAI pays through 2029. Disclosed on CoreWeave's Q1 2025 earnings call as an unnamed 'enterprise AI company'; the counterparty was identified as OpenAI in the regulatory filing the following day.

CoreWeave (Provider) · OpenAI (Buyer)

Value

up to $11.9B

Capacity / term

n/a · 5y

First revenue

not disclosed

Sources

[1] primary[2] tier-1

Initial five-year agreement of up to $11.9B for CoreWeave to deliver AI infrastructure to OpenAI, signed just ahead of CoreWeave's IPO. Flagged circular: OpenAI simultaneously became a CoreWeave investor via $350M of stock issued as part of the deal. A further expansion of up to $4B was reported in May 2025; it sits in the candidate queue until a primary source with an exact date is captured.

OpenAI (Buyer) · SoftBank (Financier) · Oracle (Provider) · MGX (Financier)

Value

up to $500B

Capacity / term

10 GW · 4y

First revenue

not disclosed

Sources

[1] primary[2] primary[3] other

PROGRAM ENVELOPE, excluded from every summed total: the January 2025 Stargate announcement of intent to invest $500B over four years in US AI infrastructure. The discrete contracts inside it get their own rows as they sign, most notably the $300B OpenAI-Oracle compute contract (openai-oracle-stargate-2025-09); summing the envelope and its contents would double count by construction. Circular: the operational partner is the anchor customer of the capacity the JV builds.

Conditions: Intent to invest $500B over four years, $100B initially, targeting 10 GW. SoftBank holds financial responsibility, OpenAI operational responsibility; initial equity funders SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. By late 2025 the program reported nearly 7 GW of planned capacity and over $400B of investment across announced sites.