OpenAI Secures 20-Year Ohio Data Center Lease With NVIDIA Backing

AI firm OpenAI has secured a 20-year lease at a data center in Ohio, backed by up to $105 billion from NVIDIA. This is part of a partnership with SB Energy to advance the data center’s development, under which SB Energy will build and operate the infrastructure.

OpenAI Secures Data Center With NVIDIA Backing

In a press release, NVIDIA announced that the AI firm will be the tenant under a 20-year data center lease with SB Energy, with the lease set to begin in 2028. This forms part of a partnership with SB Energy to develop the PORTS Technology Campus, an AI data center campus, in Ohio.

Under the agreement, the data center will also host NVIDIA AI compute infrastructure. “OpenAI will utilize the capacity at the site. The AI factory will use NVIDIA’s full-stack DSX AI factory platform, including GPUs, CPUs and networking,” the release read. NVIDIA secures an initial 4.25 IT-GW, with an option to take the remaining 3.75 IT-GW.

Meanwhile, an NVIDIA SEC filing shows that the company’s aggregate payment obligation is cumulatively capped at $105 billion for its initial commitment under the agreements. Under the lease agreement, the company will pay an amount generally equal to any shortfall between the guaranteed minimum value of the lease and amounts recovered through a replacement lease or sale.

The massive data center lease involving OpenAI comes as the demand for AI infrastructure continues to skyrocket. “Demand for AI is growing at an extraordinary pace. AI is becoming infrastructure, requiring a full stack of critical resources, including LPS,” NVIDIA noted.

The deal also comes ahead of a potential OpenAI IPO, which could happen by next year. Data from the top crypto prediction market Polymarket shows only a 20% chance that the AI firm goes public this year.

NVIDIA Addresses Questions Around The Lease

In an X post, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang assured that the deal wasn’t circular financing, as OpenAI will pay the lease. He also noted that if the AI firm doesn’t take up the lease, NVIDIA could resell the capacity to other AI firms.

“NVIDIA compute is versatile, fungible and broadly adopted. The capacity can be resold to another qualified tenant across NVIDIA’s global ecosystem of cloud service providers, enterprises, AI labs and startups,” Huang wrote.

The NVIDIA CEO also touted the PORTS-Pike deal as the next step in the company’s journey. He highlighted how they began by building chips and have expanded to systems, networking, CUDA and full-stack AI factories.

“NVIDIA is the full-stack AI infrastructure platform,” he declared. As CoinGape reported, NVIDIA recently released its open-source Nemotron 3.5 Lightning AI model, and Huang has also shown support for these models, which could boost demand for its chips.