Nvidia is in talks to invest as much as $3 billion in SB Energy, the SoftBank subsidiary developing a massive planned data center campus in Ohio for OpenAI, according to a report by The Information published Saturday. Flytten skulle ta Nvidia djupare in i energiinfrastrukturlagret i AI-ekonomin än vad chiptillverkaren någonsin har gjort tidigare.
According to the report, which cited people familiar with the discussions, the proposed investment is part of broader negotiations between Nvidia, OpenAI, and SB Energy over roughly $100 billion in credit support for the planned Ohio data center project. Nvidia has discussed investing half of the $3 billion when the Ohio project deal is signed and the other half as part of SB Energy's planned initial public offering, The Information reported. CNBC och Reuters publicerade rapporten på lördagen. For more context on this story, see our ongoing artificial intelligence updates.
En insats i kraften bakom markerna
SB Energy, founded in 2019 and also backed by OpenAI, develops large-scale power and data center infrastructure projects and is building several data center campuses to support rising demand tied to AI workloads. The company became a recurring name in the AI infrastructure story in January, when OpenAI and SoftBank announced a $1 billion investment in the firm as part of the industry's massive AI buildout, as CNBC reported at the time.
Enligt The Informations rapport siktar SB Energy på att bli börsnoterad så snart som nästa månad och kan samla in minst 5 miljarder dollar i börsintroduktionen. An investment tied to that listing would give Nvidia a direct financial interest in one of the key power players underpinning OpenAI's compute expansion — a striking shift for a company whose core business has historically been selling the accelerators that go inside the buildings, not financing the electricity that runs them.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report, and Nvidia and SB Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours. Varken OpenAI eller SoftBank har offentligt bekräftat villkoren som diskuteras.
Affären följer en avskalad garanti
The reported SB Energy talks come just one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia has revised its plans to support the proposed OpenAI data center project in Ohio and is now expected to initially guarantee less than $120 billion, down from the $250 billion previously discussed. The revision followed sustained investor pressure on Nvidia to rein in the circular financing arrangements that have come to define the AI infrastructure boom, in which chip suppliers, cloud providers, and model developers invest in one another to keep construction flowing.
Läst tillsammans skisserar de två rapporterna en bild av Nvidia som omkalibrerar snarare än drar sig tillbaka. The company appears to be pulling back from an enormous blanket guarantee while simultaneously negotiating a smaller, more targeted stake in the energy infrastructure that makes such projects viable in the first place. Elektricitet – inte mark, och i allt högre grad inte ens chips – har blivit den bindande begränsningen för konstruktion av AI-datacenter, och kraftutvecklare i elnätsskala som SB Energy sitter nu vid en stryppunkt för hela utbyggnaden.
Varför energi är den nya gränsen för AI-kapital
The AI industry's appetite for power has grown faster than most grids can accommodate, pushing hyperscalers and chipmakers alike toward energy deals that would have looked exotic just two years ago. Analytiker och branschobservatörer har upprepade gånger varnat för att AI-campus i gigawattskala kommer att leva eller dö på deras förmåga att säkra fast kraftkapacitet, och marknadsanalytiker angav Nvidias rapporterade 3 miljarder dollar som en satsning på att kraftinfrastrukturen är där nästa lager av AI-värde kommer att fångas.
För Nvidia skulle en aktieposition i SB Energy tjäna flera syften samtidigt. Det skulle hjälpa till att förankra kreditstödspaketet som OpenAI:s Ohio-campus behöver för att nå ekonomiskt slut. Det skulle anpassa Nvidia till SoftBank, en av dess viktigaste strategiska partners i Japan och USA. And it would give the company exposure to the IPO of an infrastructure developer whose valuation story is directly levered to the same AI demand curve that drives Nvidia's own bookings.
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Several milestones will determine whether the reported framework becomes reality. The signing of the Ohio project agreement would trigger the first half of Nvidia's reported investment, while SB Energy's IPO — potentially as soon as September, according to The Information — would set the stage for the second. Any final terms could still change, as the discussions are ongoing and no deal has been announced.
The negotiations also land at a delicate moment for market sentiment around AI infrastructure spending. Nvidia's earlier decision to shrink its OpenAI guarantee was widely read as a concession to investors worried about the concentration of risk among a small circle of AI counterparties. A disciplined, smaller-ticket investment in the power layer may prove an easier story for Nvidia to sell — one that keeps the Ohio project moving while capping the chipmaker's direct exposure.
For OpenAI, the arrangement would keep its most ambitious data center plans on track at a moment when its compute demands are compounding. And for SoftBank, an Nvidia cheque arriving alongside a public listing would validate its long-running bet that the AI era would eventually be as much about megawatts as about models.
None of the parties has confirmed the talks, and past AI infrastructure negotiations have shifted shape repeatedly before closing. But the direction of travel is clear: the companies building the AI economy are now underwriting the power plants that will run it, and the reported SB Energy deal would make that trend concrete in a single $3 billion line item.
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