674 billion, it is revealed that OpenAI continues to seek financing and has obtained a loan guaranteed by NVIDIA

Zhidx News on August 17, according to a report by The Information yesterday, NVIDIA is in talks to invest approximately 30 billion US dollars (about 20.2 billion yuan) in SB Energy, a data center and power infrastructure company under SoftBank.

At the same time, NVIDIA is about to finalize a credit guarantee agreement of approximately 1000 billion US dollars (about 674 billion yuan) with OpenAI, to provide credit support for its lease of a large data center in Ohio, USA.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in California, USA, SB Energy's business covers the development, construction, financing and operation of data centers, solar power generation and energy storage projects.

It is worth noting that SB Energy is the developer and constructor of the 10GW giant data center park in Ohio, while OpenAI is the main lessee of the project. NVIDIA is taking stakes in the data center developer while providing credit guarantee for the lease of the main lessee. If the project is implemented smoothly, NVIDIA can not only accelerate the construction of computing power infrastructure required by OpenAI, but also is expected to lock in its long-term AI chip order demand in the future.

According to another report by The Information on August 8, NVIDIA has agreed to invest 2 billion US dollars (about 13.5 billion yuan) in Lancium, another power infrastructure developer, and the total subsequent investment can reach up to 3 billion US dollars (about 20.2 billion yuan). Lancium has acquired and developed about 4GW of power resources in Texas, of which 1.2GW is used for OpenAI's "Stargate" campus.

From Lancium to SB Energy, NVIDIA is promoting the implementation of more AI data centers by taking stakes in power infrastructure developers, so as to expand and lock in long-term order demand.

01. Proposed to invest 20.2 billion yuan in SB Energy, half of the bet is on its IPO

People familiar with the matter said that NVIDIA is in talks to invest up to 30 billion US dollars (about 20.2 billion yuan) in SB Energy.

According to the currently discussed plan, NVIDIA may invest 1.5 billion US dollars (about 10.1 billion yuan) first when the Ohio project is signed, and then invest another 1.5 billion US dollars in the initial public offering (IPO) that SB Energy plans to hold next month. If this plan is implemented, NVIDIA will become one of the largest investors in SB Energy's public offering.

SB Energy is responsible for developing the large data center campus in Ohio for OpenAI. In January this year, OpenAI and SoftBank Group announced that they had established cooperation with SB Energy and jointly invested 1 billion US dollars in it to promote the construction of data centers under the "Stargate" project.

SB Energy's data center construction (Image source: SB Energy)

For NVIDIA, direct investment in SB Energy means that its financial support for the AI industry chain is further extended upstream to power and data center infrastructure. After obtaining funds, SB Energy will build a computing power park serving OpenAI, and the park is expected to deploy a large number of NVIDIA AI chips in the end.

02. 674 billion yuan credit guarantee supports the first phase of the project, the amount is greatly reduced compared with the original plan

In addition to directly taking stakes in SB Energy, NVIDIA is about to finalize a credit guarantee agreement of approximately 1000 billion US dollars (about 674 billion yuan) with OpenAI, to provide credit support for its lease of the Ohio data center.

This amount is lower than the previously disclosed plan. Previously, the Wall Street Journal reported on July 27 that NVIDIA might provide about 2500 billion US dollars (about 1.69 trillion yuan) in guarantee support for the project.

A person familiar with the guarantee negotiations told The Information that NVIDIA has reduced the scale of its guarantee; another person familiar with the matter said that the transaction is divided into two phases, of which 1000 billion US dollars will be used to support the first phase.

Another person familiar with the negotiations said that NVIDIA also hopes to limit the amount of credit support it undertakes for the Ohio project to no more than 25% of the total project financing, so as to avoid taking excessive guarantee responsibilities. The project will eventually include multiple data center buildings, requiring a total of 10 gigawatts of power.

03. Conclusion: NVIDIA increases investment in AI infrastructure

NVIDIA's successive investments in Lancium and SB Energy reflect that the competition focus of AI data center construction is extending to the power link. By investing in power infrastructure developers and providing credit guarantee for OpenAI to lease data centers, NVIDIA has further embedded itself into the AI infrastructure industry chain.

For gigawatt-level computing power parks, getting GPUs is only the first step. Whether they can obtain land, grid access qualifications, stable power and project financing is becoming a new threshold that determines whether the data center can be implemented. In the future, what chip manufacturers compete for may not only be chip performance and supply capacity, but also the ability to mobilize resources such as power, capital and infrastructure.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhidx" (ID: zhidxcom), written by Yang Jingli, edited by Li Shuiqing, and authorized for release by 36Kr.