Nvidia backs OpenAI and SSI with billions in data center financing and GPU access

Nvidia is deepening its financial ties to two of the most prominent AI labs. The chipmaker is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI's planned 10-gigawatt data center campus in southern Ohio, and has separately made a multibillion-dollar investment in Safe Superintelligence, the AI lab founded by former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.

The OpenAI deal, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would see Nvidia backstop a lease for a massive facility being developed by SoftBank's energy subsidiary SB Energy in Piketon, Ohio. For OpenAI, the arrangement would mark its first major step toward owning its own infrastructure rather than renting capacity from Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle. Nvidia is also said to be discussing a separate $350 billion deal to finance chips for the site.

Safe Superintelligence gets Vera Rubin GPUs and billions from Nvidia

Safe Superintelligence, which emerged from two years of stealth, announced a long-term partnership with Nvidia that includes an undisclosed investment. A source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch the investment stretches into multiple billions. The partnership gives SSI access to Nvidia's Vera Rubin GPU platform, which the company says will increase the startup's compute resources by an order of magnitude.

• SSI has raised $7 billion to date and is valued at $32 billion post-money, according to PitchBook data.
• Backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Alphabet, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV, Sequoia Capital, and others.
• SSI also partnered with Google Cloud last year to power its research.
• The company is pursuing a straight-shot approach to building safe, aligned artificial superintelligence without commercial product releases.

Strategic implications for Nvidia's customer roster

The dual deals position Nvidia as both a financier and technology supplier to the two most closely watched AI labs. For OpenAI, the Ohio campus represents a shift away from reliance on Microsoft's Azure cloud. For SSI, the partnership gives Sutskever's team the compute needed to scale its alignment-focused research. Sutskever, who co-created AlexNet and led OpenAI's now-defunct Superalignment team, said in a statement: We have research that is worthy of scaling up, and having access to a big NVIDIA computer will let us do so.

Neither deal is final. The OpenAI financing guarantee remains under negotiation, and the SSI partnership was announced with few financial details. But together they signal Nvidia's willingness to use its balance sheet to lock in demand for its next-generation hardware, even as it faces scrutiny over its dominant position in the AI chip market.