Nvidia puts $1.5 billion into the data center company behind OpenAI's giant Ohio facility
The chip maker will also extend up to $105 billion in credit to help build a site that could eventually draw as much power as a small city.
Key points
- Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy, the data center developer backed by SoftBank and OpenAI, as of August 2026.
- Nvidia will provide up to $105 billion in credit to help construct OpenAI's Ports-Pike data center near Cincinnati, Ohio.
- The facility could eventually reach 8 gigawatts of power capacity, supplied by a planned $33 billion natural gas plant built on former U.S. Department of Energy land.
- Natural gas power plant construction costs have risen 66% in the last two years, according to BloombergNEF.
- Analysts warn the new plants could compete with export markets for natural gas, potentially tripling prices in some parts of the country.
Nvidia announced Monday it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a data center developer whose backers already include SoftBank and OpenAI. The deal, confirmed through documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, makes Nvidia the sole provider of computing hardware at OpenAI's planned Ports-Pike data center near Cincinnati, Ohio.
What is actually being built here?
The Ports-Pike site is designed to start at 4.25 gigawatts of power capacity and eventually reach 8 gigawatts. A gigawatt is roughly the output of a large nuclear reactor. Running AI at that scale demands extraordinary amounts of electricity.
To feed that demand, SB Energy will build a 9.2-gigawatt natural gas power plant on the site for $33 billion. That figure reflects a sharp rise in construction costs: BloombergNEF puts the increase at 66% over two years. The land itself sits on a U.S. Department of Energy site that once enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and for Navy submarines. We first covered the federal land deal that made this possible on 6 August, when the arrangement raised questions in the Senate about SoftBank's $50 million donation to President Trump's library two months before the deal was approved.
What does Nvidia get out of this?
A guaranteed customer at enormous scale. Being the sole hardware supplier at a facility this size locks in revenue for years. Nvidia will also extend up to $105 billion in credit to finance the build, a commitment that shows how central controlling AI infrastructure has become to its strategy.
SoftBank is a familiar face here. The Japanese investment giant had previously held $5.8 billion worth of Nvidia stock, sold in November 2025 to fund other AI investments. It now sits on the investor side of the very infrastructure Nvidia will supply.
Should ordinary people care about a data center deal?
Possibly, if natural gas prices affect your heating or electricity bill. Once this plant and others come online, they'll compete with overseas export markets for the same gas supply. Some analysts warn that combination could triple natural gas prices in parts of the United States. That cost flows through to households and businesses. Our 14 August story on Big Tech's gas bet found energy researchers flagging the same risk across Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft builds.
Decisions made in boardrooms about where to build data centers are reshaping energy markets that ordinary people depend on every day. The thing worth watching isn't the investment headline. It's whether federal energy regulators move to address the demand pressure before the price shock arrives.
