Nvidia to invest $1.5 billion in SB energy under OpenAI data center deal

Nvidia has announced plans to invest $1.5 billion into SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed developer building a data center campus in Pike County, Ohio. OpenAI has already committed to lease the data centre for 20 years to run its AI workloads.

Nvidia becomes SB Energy shareholder

The stake makes Nvidia a shareholder in SB Energy alongside SoftBank Group and OpenAI, according to Nvidia’s newsroom announcement. SB Energy will build, own, and operate the data center with OpenAI signing on as the tenant and customer under a lease that spans two decades.

The campus sits on the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, a Cold War-era uranium enrichment site now being redeveloped on a mix of private and federal land. OpenAI, in its own statement, said it has agreed to secure about 8 gigawatts of IT capacity at what the partners call PORTS-Pike.

The company will pay the project’s energy and infrastructure costs directly, and SB Energy has pledged that grid upgrades and new transmission lines will not land on the bills of other Ohio ratepayers.

Nvidia buys deeper into power and physical infrastructure

Nvidia’s release describes providing credit support on land, power, and shell construction to lock in an initial 4.25 gigawatts of IT capacity, with an option on the remaining 3.75 gigawatts.

“Land, power and shell have become vital in the age of AI,” Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and CEO, said in the announcement, adding that the company is “securing long-lived infrastructure for NVIDIA compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories.”

The site will run exclusively on Nvidia’s DSX platform, involving GPUs, CPUs, and networking. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also stated that the project would give “millions of people” access to AI for tasks “from finding new medicines to starting businesses.”

https://t.co/WPqpdj0p2T

— Jensen Huang (@JensenHuang) August 17, 2026

Power needs remain supreme

The capacity numbers hinge on power generation that still only exists on paper. SB Energy and SoftBank plan to build at least 10 gigawatts of new energy generation to create the 8 gigawatts of IT capacity, and also plan to invest at least $4.2 billion in regional grid infrastructure via a partnership with AEP Ohio, according to Nvidia’s release.

The development is set to be done in stages. OpenAI claims the the first 800 megawatts is expected to come online in 2028, largely on existing AEP infrastructure, with later phases requiring new power plants including natural gas generation.

To limit any potential water draw, the data center will use closed-loop, air-cooled systems that recirculate water through cooling towers instead of consuming it, with OpenAI adding that ongoing use will resemble that of an office building once the system is filled.

Ohio primed to benefit

The PORTS-Pike partners are pitching the project as an engine to help in the creation of jobs and revenue for an Ohio region that has lost its industrial anchor. OpenAI’s statement claims the development could bring about 35,000 construction jobs till 2032 and 2,500 permanent operating roles, and comes with a memorandum of understanding signed with North America’s Building Trades Unions.

OpenAI is also adding another $40 million to a fund SB Energy had already committed $40 million to, for an initial $80 million pool. Separately, OpenAI has also said it will make up to $84 million in Codex credits available to about 844,000 Ohio college and technical students, amounting to $100 each, during the 2026–2027 school year.

All this in addition to the community grant puts the total benefits from OpenAI above $160 million.

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