On July 26, the American Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that NVIDIA is negotiating with OpenAI to provide a financing guarantee of approximately $250 billion for the large data centers they are building.
According to reports, this 10 gigawatt data center project is located in Ohio, USA. It was developed by the energy subsidiary of Japan SoftBank Group. The total investment for the project could reach approximately $500 billion.
The report indicates that since OpenAI is a private company that has not yet achieved profitability and does not have an investment-grade credit rating, it would be difficult for OpenAI to obtain such financing opportunities without the support of NVIDIA. The guarantees provided by NVIDIA will help SoftBank obtain more funding to support the construction of data centers.
OpenAI has been negotiating for several weeks regarding the rental of computing power for this data center. According to the plan, once this data center cluster is completed, it will become one of the largest artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure projects in the world. It will also be a landmark project that reflects the surge in demand for computing power by the global AI industry. This project has also attracted the attention of the Trump administration, who have touted this investment as an important achievement in attracting significant technology investments to the United States.
Bloomberg notes that in recent years, technology giants including SoftBank and Google have been driving billions of dollars in funding towards the construction of data centers and AI research and development. This deal also highlights the increasingly complex 'circular financing' model in the AI industry—large tech companies provide financial support for infrastructure projects, which in turn drive demand for their chips, cloud services, and AI products.
However, as investors have recently started re-evaluating the valuation of tech stocks, there are some concerns regarding the surge in investment in AI infrastructure. Some investors worry that the data centers currently under construction may exceed the actual needs of future AI services.
The report indicates that NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang has been investing substantial amounts of money in the entire AI industry chain over the past few years, attempting to accelerate the adoption of his company's chip products and reduce potential bottlenecks in the supply chain and infrastructure that could hinder AI development. In addition to potential collaborations with OpenAI, NVIDIA is also promoting investments in other AI-related infrastructure.
Huang Renxun believes that investing in AI companies can not only promote the growth of NVIDIA's own business, but also generate investment returns.
However, some critics argue that by investing in AI companies and providing support for infrastructure construction, NVIDIA may be artificially creating a higher market demand, thereby further increasing the risk of an inflated valuation bubble in the AI industry.
