According to monitoring by Beating, OpenAI is in negotiations with SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, to long-term lease a proposed 10 gigawatt (GW) AI data center park on federal land in Pike County, southern Ohio. If fully constructed, the total investment for the park will reach at least $500 billion. A key part of the deal involves Nvidia discussing the use of its substantial balance sheet to provide credit backing for OpenAI's lease agreement and future project financing for SB Energy. If an agreement is reached, this will mark OpenAI's largest infrastructure commitment to date, while also being Nvidia's first role as a de facto infrastructure financial guarantor for such a large-scale project. The site was originally a former uranium enrichment nuclear weapons material manufacturing base under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). SB Energy, established in 2019 and controlled by SoftBank Group, also counts Ares Management and OpenAI as shareholders (OpenAI invested $1 billion in it earlier this year and hired it to build a 1.2 GW data center in Milam County, Texas). According to a new trade policy agreement announced by the U.S. Department of Commerce in February, SB Energy will invest $33 billion to build a 9.2 GW natural gas power plant, owned by the U.S. government and operated by SB Energy, which will also self-fund grid upgrades. In March, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the project. The 10 GW project will generate approximately 4.5 times the power of the Hoover Dam. The first phase of 800 megawatts (MW) is expected to be operational by 2028. Under a 20-year lease, OpenAI will control the equipment within the facility and will assume rental payment obligations after the project becomes operational, with total rent expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars. Additionally, as IT equipment such as chips and servers typically account for about 70% of data center costs, OpenAI will also need approximately $350 billion to procure Nvidia's AI chips. It is reported that OpenAI is already discussing how to raise funds for these chip purchases. Previously, Google had also adopted a similar model by providing debt and rent guarantees for Anthropic's TPU data center lease. The backdrop of this deal is OpenAI's desire for control over computing power infrastructure. Earlier this year, its original plan to partner with Oracle and SoftBank for a $500 billion 'Stargate' joint venture was shelved, and OpenAI postponed plans to build its own data centers in the short term. This collaboration with SB Energy marks a 'piecemeal' approach to advancing its massive infrastructure ambitions. Furthermore, on Monday (June 8), OpenAI secretly submitted its IPO prospectus, with at least $665 billion in cloud leasing agreements with Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon AWS over the next five years expected to be a focal point of the IPO review. SB Energy also announced plans for an IPO in the U.S. in May, with a valuation potentially exceeding $50 billion.