Nvidia published a press release on Monday, and the number everyone repeated was not in it. The $105 billion showed up in the SEC filing. What it buys is not a data center and it is not a loan: these are residual value guaranties, cumulatively capped at $105 billion, standing behind OpenAI's lease and power payments to SB Energy for roughly 4.25 IT-gigawatts at the PORTS-Pike campus in Pike County, Ohio. A promise that if OpenAI stops paying rent, Nvidia pays it. The cash in Monday's announcement is a $1.5 billion equity stake in SB Energy, which is a rounding error next to the thing sitting beside it. We spent a while on the filing summary, because the gap between those two figures is the actual story.
The short answer
On 17 August, Nvidia, SB Energy and OpenAI announced the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio. SB Energy builds and operates it, OpenAI takes a 20-year lease, and Nvidia is the exclusive compute supplier. The headline number is a guarantee, not a cheque: residual value guaranties capped at $105 billion that go live only as each lease commences from 2028, and that OpenAI has agreed to reimburse. Real exposure, different shape. Nothing here changes what you can buy or rent this year.
The instrument, and why the word matters
A residual value guaranty is a landlord’s comfort blanket. SB Energy is about to sink an enormous amount of capital into buildings and substations on a site in southern Ohio, against a tenant that did not exist ten years ago. Lenders ask an obvious question. Nvidia’s answer is to stand behind the payments.
Read the filing summary and the mechanics are unglamorous. If OpenAI defaults or becomes insolvent, Nvidia covers the shortfall to the guaranteed minimum value. It then gets the options any guarantor would want: assume the lease, relet it, sell it, terminate, or sit on its hands for up to a year while it decides. OpenAI has agreed to reimburse whatever Nvidia pays out. Obligations can end on the twentieth anniversary of each lease commencement.
So the $105 billion is a ceiling on a contingent liability, and it does not arrive in one lump. Each guaranty switches on when its own lease commences, and the first of those is expected in 2028. Nvidia may also extend credit support to roughly 3.8 GW of additional capacity, at its discretion, which is the polite way of saying it has not committed to that part.
Honestly, I think the reflex to file this as “Nvidia spends $105B” is the wrong instinct, and the opposite reflex is wrong too. It is not nothing. A guarantor with a $105 billion ceiling is exposed to one tenant’s credit for two decades, and that tenant’s ability to pay depends on a market that has to keep growing for the numbers to work. Jensen Huang told reporters OpenAI’s spending on Nvidia chips is expected to amount to around $600 billion of compute capacity through 2030. Those two figures live in the same sentence whether Nvidia likes it or not.
The site, the gigawatts, the 2028 wall
PORTS-Pike sits on and around the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which spent decades enriching uranium. It is being developed with AEP Ohio, the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce, which tells you how much of this project is permitting rather than servers.
The published capacity is 4.25 IT-GW initially, with an option on the remaining 3.75 IT-GW to reach 8 IT-GW. Behind that, SB Energy and SoftBank say they will build at least 10 GW of new energy generation and put at least $4.2 billion into regional grid infrastructure, under an AEP Ohio arrangement both sides describe as protecting ratepayers. TechCrunch reports the generation includes a large natural gas facility, which the official releases do not spell out.
The community numbers are smaller and worth keeping straight. SB Energy had already announced a $40 million community benefits fund. OpenAI is adding an incremental $40 million, for $80 million total. Reuters and Nikkei put the jobs at roughly 35,000 in construction through 2032 and about 2,500 permanent operating roles.
Divide the cap by the capacity and you get about $24.7 billion of guaranteed exposure per IT-GW. That is our arithmetic, not a published figure, and it is a blunt one, since the guaranties cover rent and power across twenty years rather than anything per-watt. It is still the cleanest way we found to hold the number in your head.
What actually changes if you buy or rent compute
Nothing this year, and probably nothing next year either. That is the first thing to be clear about, because gigawatt headlines have a way of getting read as supply relief. Phases begin in 2028. No allocation was announced, no lead time, no price.
What does change is a little more interesting. Nvidia secured the capacity at PORTS-Pike to exclusively host its own AI factories, which means one of the largest sites anyone has announced is closed to other silicon before a slab has been poured. If you were hoping the accelerator market broadens through sheer weight of new build, this particular 4.25 IT-GW is not where that happens.
The second change is one nobody puts on a slide. Your hardware vendor now carries twenty years of contingent exposure to your other vendor’s solvency. That belongs in a risk register somewhere, filed next to the observation that this is the second time in eight days Nvidia has used the same instrument. On 10 August it signed memorandums with six asset managers targeting more than $500 billion of third-party capital, with Huang describing residual value support on up to 25% of an opportunity. PORTS-Pike is that idea applied to one named site. Whether the $105 billion here represents 25% of the obligations or something much closer to all of them is not disclosed, and we would not guess.
Worth remembering how little of Nvidia’s strategic position shows up in the usual filings. Its most recent 13F listed eight positions worth $63.44 billion and none of this, because guaranties and private stakes are not 13(f) securities.
Two things we will be watching. Whether the option on the remaining 3.75 IT-GW gets exercised, and on what terms, since that is where the cap could grow. And how the AEP Ohio ratepayer arrangement holds up once construction is real, because data center power politics in Ohio has already been contested and 10 GW is not a quiet number.
Image: SB Energy, announcement visual from its PORTS-Pike release, 17 August 2026.
Sources
Primary announcement and figures from the NVIDIA newsroom release and SB Energy’s own page on PORTS-Pike, both 17 August 2026. The structure of the residual value guaranties, the $105 billion cumulative cap, the default and insolvency triggers, the remedies and the reimbursement clause come from coverage of Nvidia’s SEC filing, summarised by TradingView and reported by Nikkei Asia, which also carries the jobs figures and the Huang comment on OpenAI’s compute spending through 2030. The site history and the natural gas generation detail are from TechCrunch.
Frequently asked questions
Is Nvidia spending $105 billion on the Ohio data center?
No. The $105 billion is a cumulative cap on residual value guaranties disclosed in Nvidia's 17 August 2026 filing, not money it has committed to spend. Nvidia stands behind OpenAI's lease and power payment obligations to SB Energy, and it only pays if OpenAI defaults or becomes insolvent. The commitments become effective as individual leases commence, expected to begin in 2028. The cash Nvidia announced on the same day is a $1.5 billion equity investment in SB Energy.
What happens if OpenAI cannot pay the rent?
Nvidia covers the shortfall to the guaranteed minimum value, and it then holds the remedies a landlord normally would: assume the lease, relet the space, sell it, terminate, or defer for up to a year. OpenAI has separately agreed to reimburse Nvidia for amounts paid, so the guaranty creates a claim rather than a pure write-off. Obligations can end on the twentieth anniversary of each lease commencement or on other specified events.
How big is PORTS-Pike and when does it come online?
The initial deployment is 4.25 IT-GW of AI factory capacity, with an option on a further 3.75 IT-GW for 8 IT-GW in total, backed by at least 10 GW of new energy generation built by SB Energy and SoftBank. It sits on and around the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Pike County, Ohio, developed with AEP Ohio, the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce. Capacity is expected to arrive in phases beginning in 2028.
Does this affect GPU supply or pricing in 2026?
Not in any way you can plan around. Nothing at PORTS-Pike is scheduled before 2028, and the announcement contains no allocation, no lead time and no price. What it does settle is the silicon question for that site: Nvidia secured the capacity to exclusively host its own AI factories, so 4.25 IT-GW of future demand is spoken for.
Is this the same thing as the $500 billion financing platform Nvidia announced on 10 August?
Related, and one step further. The 10 August memorandums with six asset managers set up platforms to mobilize third-party capital, with Jensen Huang describing residual value support on up to 25% of an opportunity. PORTS-Pike uses the same instrument on a single named site with a single tenant. Nvidia has not published what share of OpenAI's total obligations the $105 billion cap represents, so the two percentages cannot be compared directly.
