Nvidia Guarantees Up to $105B for OpenAI's Ohio Data Center
SB Energy's Pike County campus carries 35,000 construction jobs and a financing template GCs should understand before bidding hyperscale work.
Nvidia is backing OpenAI’s data center buildout at SB Energy’s PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, with a guarantee capped at $105 billion. That is not Nvidia spending $105 billion. It is a residual-value guarantee, a contractual backstop that makes the project financeable, and it is a structure worth learning if your firm bids hyperscale construction work.
Why it matters
Nvidia’s own 8-K filing spells out the mechanism: if OpenAI defaults or goes insolvent, Nvidia covers the shortfall between a guaranteed minimum lease value and whatever SB Energy recovers by re-leasing or selling the asset. OpenAI has agreed to reimburse Nvidia for anything actually paid out. Separately, Nvidia is putting $1.5 billion of its own cash into SB Energy, the company that builds, owns and operates the campus under a 20-year lease to OpenAI. The guarantee is what lets lenders treat the project as bankable at hyperscale size without OpenAI itself carrying an investment-grade balance sheet. That is the piece worth naming to your own lenders or GCs shopping data center construction debt: a credit guarantee from a well-capitalized counterparty can substitute for tenant credit rating.
For contractors, there is a second, more direct number: OpenAI says the buildout will generate roughly 35,000 construction jobs over a six-year build cycle, plus 2,500 permanent operations jobs once running. That is where the bidding is, and it is a multi-year pipeline, not a single-season spike.
The numbers
The guarantee covers an initial 4.25 gigawatts of IT capacity, with Nvidia holding an option, at its sole discretion, to extend credit support to roughly 3.8 gigawatts more, pushing the site toward 8 GW total. SB Energy’s lease with OpenAI runs 20 years. Nvidia’s own filing notes its guarantee obligations end early if OpenAI’s credit improves enough on its own, or at the 20-year mark, whichever comes first.
What’s next
Nvidia’s payment obligations only activate once SB Energy hits “ready-for-service” milestones expected starting in 2028, which means the guarantee protects post-completion lease value, not the build itself. Construction-phase risk on a project this size still runs through ordinary performance bonds and completion schedules, guarantee or not. Firms chasing this work, or watching how national hyperscale financing structures spread to other campuses, should expect more residual-value guarantees to show up as the template for financing data centers where the tenant’s own credit doesn’t yet support the debt alone.