Nvidia (NVDA) is in talks to provide a roughly $250 billion financial backstop for OpenAI’s massive data center project in southern Ohio, The Wall Street Journal reported — a move that extends the chipmaker’s role from core computing supplier to key credit guarantor for the most expensive data center project ever announced. For investors, the transaction may mark the beginning of a profound re-rating of the stock’s long-term growth potential.
The data center is being developed by SB Energy, the power subsidiary of SoftBank, on a decommissioned uranium-enrichment site roughly 50 miles south of Columbus. The full cost of the project, including chips, could exceed $500 billion, with total power demand eventually reaching 10 gigawatts. Under the proposed terms, Nvidia’s $250 billion commitment would cover the lease and construction financing; the cost of the chips themselves would fall outside that backstop. In a parallel discussion, Nvidia is also in talks to help OpenAI fund up to $350 billion in chip purchases, adding to the $30 billion it has already invested in the company.
The power for the facility is controlled by the U.S. government and backed separately by Japan, which has agreed to invest $33 billion in a natural-gas power project on the federal land under a recent trade deal. Japan and the United States will share proceeds from power sales until Japan recovers its outlay, after which Washington’s share rises to 90%. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is personally involved in deciding which companies gain access to that power and broke ground on the complex in March alongside SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
For OpenAI, the Ohio campus represents its first direct data center lease, a strategic shift that gradually reduces its reliance on cloud providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle. The company has raised its projected spending on computing infrastructure to about $750 billion through 2030, up from roughly $600 billion earlier this year, and separately announced plans to build its first wholly owned data center in Effingham County, Georgia, with a $20 billion commitment. Those expansion plans all point to sustained, powerful demand for Nvidia hardware.
Yet serving as OpenAI’s financial backer is only the opening act. The core of Nvidia’s long bull case lies in an AI infrastructure build-out that is still in its early stages. Nvidia itself expects global data center capital expenditures to reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually by 2030. For perspective, the four largest cloud hyperscalers — Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms — have already disclosed plans to spend about $650 billion in 2026, a number that has been revised upward repeatedly, with Alphabet recently announcing yet another expansion of its capital expenditure plans. When spending from private AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as government investments, is added, an estimate places total global AI capex for this year at around $875 billion. To hit the midpoint of Nvidia’s forecast — $3.5 trillion a year — overall AI spending would still need to quadruple from current levels.
Market analysts argue that Nvidia is well positioned to at least maintain, if not expand, its share of that spending wave. While some large customers are developing custom silicon, a structural shift is underway: as more data centers move from the construction phase to the equipment procurement stage, computing-related spending naturally captures a larger share of the total pie, helping to offset competitive pressures. Under this scenario, if Nvidia’s revenue and earnings were to quadruple, a share price of $800 becomes imaginable, corresponding to a market capitalization of close to $20 trillion. As of July 27, Nvidia shares traded near $210, and the stock carried a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of around 32 — hardly in bubble territory.
Even if growth falls well short of a quadrupling, a doubling or tripling over a four-year horizon would still crush broader market returns. In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, Nvidia occupies a position that is hard to bypass. The Ohio super-project is merely the tip of the iceberg; it reveals Nvidia’s evolution from a chipmaker to a critical enabler of AI infrastructure, and it suggests that this long bull story has only just entered its most imaginative chapter.
