Nvidia is making a substantial investment in a massive Ohio data center project that will be leased by OpenAI, according to reports from The New York Times and TechCrunch. The New York Times reports that Nvidia’s backing could reach as much as $105 billion for the facility, which could cost up to $500 billion total and become one of the world’s largest data centers.
According to TechCrunch, Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion in SoftBank’s data center developer behind the OpenAI project. The investment will guarantee that Nvidia’s chips power the OpenAI data center, TechCrunch reports. The discrepancy in reported investment amounts—$105 billion versus $1.5 billion—may reflect different aspects of the financial arrangement or different phases of the project.
The Ohio facility represents a significant infrastructure commitment for AI development, with OpenAI as the primary tenant. The partnership brings together Nvidia’s chip manufacturing capabilities, SoftBank’s data center development expertise, and OpenAI’s computing needs for AI model training and deployment.