Nvidia is weighing an investment of up to $3B in SB Energy, the renewable power developer owned by SoftBank, to back the electricity supply for OpenAI’s planned data center campus in Ohio. The Information reported the talks, citing people familiar with the matter, and multiple outlets have since confirmed them.
SB Energy builds solar farms and battery storage, the kind of capacity hyperscale AI campuses need to keep running around the clock. OpenAI and SoftBank already poured $1B into the unit in January as part of the Stargate buildout, so an Nvidia check would extend the chipmaker’s reach further down the power chain.
The move arrives as Nvidia separately trims its financial guarantee for the same Ohio project, with reports putting the reduced backstop at under $120B, down from an earlier $250B figure. The two shifts tell a similar story: AI infrastructure financing is spreading beyond chip sales and lease guarantees into equity stakes in the energy layer itself.
For startups, the pattern matters. Power is becoming a deal-making asset class on par with compute, and data center developers, energy suppliers, and financiers are being pulled into the same balance sheets. Nvidia has spent much of 2026 packaging GPU demand into financing structures; an equity position in the company that powers its largest customer’s campus would mark a more direct bet.
Neither Nvidia nor SB Energy has confirmed the talks, and the terms could still change. But the direction is clear: the AI infrastructure economy is now pricing in the grid, not just the chips.
