Nvidia is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of a large data center project, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. The guarantee would help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt project in southern Ohio being developed by SoftBank’s energy subsidiary, according to the report.

The project is expected to cost more than $500 billion in total, including the chips inside the data center, the WSJ said. The $250 billion guarantee would cover the data center lease and debt financing, but would not cover Nvidia chips inside the facility; Nvidia is also discussing financing OpenAI chip purchases worth up to $350 billion.

For OpenAI, a deal would mark a first step toward controlling its own infrastructure instead of renting capacity from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle, according to the report. For Nvidia, the arrangement would guarantee demand for its chips for years to come, as its graphics processing chips are used for the massive data crunching needed to train large AI models such as ChatGPT.

Nvidia’s backing would support financing vehicles designed to reassure lenders about the project’s funding, the report said. The first phase is expected to be finished in 2028 with around 800 megawatts of power, while the power is controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal tied to Tokyo’s pledge to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in deciding who gets access to the power, according to the report. Reuters could not immediately verify the WSJ report, and Nvidia, OpenAI and the U.S. Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.

OpenAI has been in advanced talks for several weeks to lease the site and is among the companies showing the strongest interest in the project, the report said. Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken to Lutnick in recent weeks, while tech giants are increasingly using debt and equity markets to fund AI infrastructure, with spending set to top $700 billion this year.

Nvidia is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of a large data center project, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. The guarantee would help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt project in southern Ohio being developed by SoftBank’s energy subsidiary, according to the report.

The project is expected to cost more than $500 billion in total, including the chips inside the data center, the WSJ said. The $250 billion guarantee would cover the data center lease and debt financing, but would not cover Nvidia chips inside the facility; Nvidia is also discussing financing OpenAI chip purchases worth up to $350 billion.

For OpenAI, a deal would mark a first step toward controlling its own infrastructure instead of renting capacity from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle, according to the report. For Nvidia, the arrangement would guarantee demand for its chips for years to come, as its graphics processing chips are used for the massive data crunching needed to train large AI models such as ChatGPT.

Nvidia’s backing would support financing vehicles designed to reassure lenders about the project’s funding, the report said. The first phase is expected to be finished in 2028 with around 800 megawatts of power, while the power is controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal tied to Tokyo’s pledge to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is involved in deciding who gets access to the power, according to the report. Reuters could not immediately verify the WSJ report, and Nvidia, OpenAI and the U.S. Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.

OpenAI has been in advanced talks for several weeks to lease the site and is among the companies showing the strongest interest in the project, the report said. Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken to Lutnick in recent weeks, while tech giants are increasingly using debt and equity markets to fund AI infrastructure, with spending set to top $700 billion this year.