Nvidia in talks over $3 billion SB Energy deal for OpenAI

The race for power to feed AI data centers is entering its next phase: Nvidia is negotiating an investment of roughly $3 billion in SB Energy, the energy unit of Japan's SoftBank, according to a report by The Information that Reuters and CNBC picked up over the weekend.

The money is said to be part of the financing package for OpenAI's planned data-center campus in Ohio. SB Energy develops utility-scale solar farms and battery storage and is expected to supply the site. For OpenAI, secured energy has become as critical a bottleneck as the chips themselves.

For Nvidia, the deal would be another piece of a strategy that goes far beyond selling chips: the company increasingly invests along its customers' entire supply chain — from stakes in buyers like SpaceX to the energy infrastructure without which no data center can run.

The talks come at a moment when Nvidia's financial entanglement with OpenAI is already under scrutiny. Just this week, the company was reported to have roughly halved its credit backstop commitment for the Ohio site. A possible SB Energy investment would mark a shift: less guarantee, more direct ownership.

According to the reports, no agreement has been reached yet, and all parties have declined to comment. If the talks fail, the Ohio campus's energy supply would have to be financed by other means.