MUMBAI: The AI race is getting a financial boost. Nvidia is considering investing up to $3 billion in SB Energy, a SoftBank Group subsidiary developing a major data centre campus in Ohio for OpenAI, as discussions over the project’s enormous financing requirements gather pace.
According to The Information, citing people familiar with the talks, the proposed investment forms part of wider negotiations involving Nvidia, OpenAI and SB Energy over roughly $100 billion in credit support for the Ohio project.
Under the structure being discussed, Nvidia could commit around $1.5 billion when the agreement for the data centre is signed. A further $1.5 billion could potentially come through SB Energy’s proposed initial public offering.
SB Energy is reportedly targeting an IPO as early as next month and could look to raise at least $5 billion through the offering. If the discussions progress as reported, Nvidia’s participation would make the chipmaker more than just a supplier to the AI infrastructure boom.
The proposed financing comes as OpenAI seeks to secure the vast computing and power infrastructure needed to develop and operate its AI models. SB Energy, founded in 2019 and backed by SoftBank, specialises in large-scale power and data centre infrastructure and is developing multiple campuses to meet growing demand for AI computing.
The Ohio project has already been the subject of changing financing expectations. A recent Wall Street Journal report said Nvidia had scaled back the financial support it was considering, with the company now expected to initially guarantee less than $120 billion, compared with an earlier figure of $250 billion.
The latest proposal would therefore put Nvidia’s capital directly into SB Energy while tying its broader financial involvement to the Ohio development. The talks underline how the AI infrastructure race is increasingly stretching beyond chips and servers into power, financing and massive data centre campuses.
For Nvidia, which has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, the discussions could mark another step into the infrastructure that keeps the industry’s computing ambitions running.
