OpenAI signs Ohio data center lease with Nvidia backing

OpenAI has secured the largest data center project announced to date, signing a 20-year lease for an expansive facility in Ohio with Nvidia providing a financial backstop of up to $105 billion. The deal, finalized on Monday, August 17, 2026, is with SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, for the PORTSPike Technology Campus near Cincinnati. The agreement provides OpenAI with approximately 8 gigawatts of IT capacity, with the total campus, including cooling and infrastructure, projected to reach 10 gigawatts.

Nvidia’s investment of $1.5 billion in SB Energy makes it the exclusive chip supplier for the initial phase of the project, which covers 4.25 gigawatts of IT capacity. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the deal as addressing the new bottlenecks in AI infrastructure, introducing the acronym "LPS" to stand for land, power, and shell. According to Huang, securing these foundational elements has surpassed chips and networking gear as the primary challenge for AI development. The financial guarantee from Nvidia is designed to bridge the gap for rapidly growing AI labs like OpenAI, which are expanding faster than their balance sheets can support for long-term infrastructure projects.