Nvidia announced a $1.5 billion investment in SB Energy, the SoftBank‑linked developer building OpenAI’s Ports‑Pike data center near Cincinnati, Ohio. The deal makes Nvidia the sole provider of compute infrastructure for the facility, which is slated to expand from an initial 4.25 gigawatts to roughly 8 gigawatts of capacity.
Alongside the equity stake, Nvidia will extend up to $105 billion in credit to help construct the site, including a 9.2‑gigawatt natural‑gas power plant projected to cost $33 billion. BloombergNEF notes natural‑gas plant costs have risen 66 % in the past two years, and the new plant could pressure domestic gas supplies enough to triple prices in certain regions.
SoftBank, already an investor in SB Energy alongside OpenAI, recently sold $5.8 billion of Nvidia stock to fund other AI projects. The Ohio location sits on land formerly used by the U.S. Department of Energy for uranium enrichment for the nuclear arsenal and Navy submarines, highlighting a shift from legacy defense uses to next‑generation AI infrastructure.
