NEW YORK: Nvidia Corp is in discussions to provide a financing guarantee to help OpenAI lease computing from a US data centre project planned for 2028, underscoring how the world’s most valuable company is funnelling capital into the infrastructure that drives its business.
Nvidia is in discussions to help the creator of ChatGPT lease a US$500bil, 10-gigawatt hub that SoftBank Group Corp is overseeing in Ohio, people familiar with the matter said.
The US chipmaker may provide a guarantee of as much as US$250bil to the artificial intelligence (AI) lab, one of the people said.
Negotiations are in their early stages and could collapse or financing terms may change, the people added, asking to remain anonymous to describe private talks.
A guarantee by Nvidia would highlight the increasingly circular financing behind the AI boom, as tech giants fund ever-larger projects that ultimately generate business for themselves.
Investors have in recent weeks begun to cool on lofty tech stock valuations, worried that there’s more capacity under construction than future AI services will require.
Big US players from Meta Platforms Inc to Alphabet Inc have accelerated borrowing in recent months to bankroll that historic buildout, prompting fears about overly ambitious spending on a technology that’s yet to provide consistent returns.
The Ohio data centre complex as envisioned would be among the largest in the world, a mega-symbol of the enormous demand for computing to propel AI development.
It’s also a centrepiece project for SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and the Trump administration, which hailed the investment as a major win.
The Japanese investment powerhouse intends to join big tech firms in driving trillions of dollars into data centre construction and AI development in coming years.
A major financing deal involving Nvidia would help SoftBank borrow more capital for its tentpole Ohio project, which is being developed by subsidiary SB Energy.
“While Nvidia’s investments and partnerships reinforce confidence in long-term AI buildouts, investors remain concerned about circular financing,” said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments.
ChatGPT’s developer has been in talks to secure that capacity for weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier.
Nvidia is separately discussing financing for OpenAI chip purchases that may total US$350bil, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Representatives for Nvidia, OpenAI and SoftBank didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bloomberg Intelligence said Nvidia’s talks to provide a roughly US$250bil financing backstop for an OpenAI data centre lease, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, look constructive for CoreWeave, Crusoe Energy and other neoclouds.
“The structure suggests Nvidia is prepared to support larger AI infrastructure build-outs, easing concern that capacity demand is fading or that funding markets won’t absorb the next wave of projects.
“Alphabet’s capex increase last week pointed to sustained hyperscaler spending, and similar signals from Microsoft, Amazon and Meta this earnings season would reinforce our view that high-end AI computing remains supply-constrained.
“We’ll watch whether Google makes similar credit-wrapper commitments to neocloud partners in its orbit, as it previously did with Fluidstack, and whether such backing lowers financing costs,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Anurag Rana and Josh Christensen.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has directed billions of dollars into companies throughout the AI supply chain.
He’s aiming to accelerate the uptake of his products and eliminate roadblocks that threaten to slow the adoption of AI.
Nvidia is separately investing US$1bil in Naver Corp to help finance an AI data centre under construction, and is teaming up with SK Group to build more than two gigawatts of AI data centres on the South Korean Peninsula.
For Nvidia, closer ties with SK will help improve its access to high-bandwidth memory chips.
That conglomerate’s SK Hynix Inc business and South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co are the two biggest providers of the crucial components, semiconductors that are in short supply because of the global build-out of AI data centres.
Huang has argued that investments in companies such as Anthropic PBC and OpenAI will help not only his business but provide an investment return.
Critics have expressed concern that such moves represent an artificial inflation of demand. — Bloomberg
