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not a flat 10GW; a specific 20-year OpenAI lease rather than open-ended talks), so that row's status was changed to superseded rather than deleted or merged.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$250B/$120B figures circulating 7-27 through 8-14 were pre-signing negotiation leaks per WSJ and are explicitly superseded by the SEC-filed number.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