Nvidia is in talks to provide a roughly $US250 billion financing for OpenAI as part of a massive data centre project, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The guarantees from Nvidia would help the ChatGPT maker lease a 10-gigawatt project that SoftBank's energy subsidiary is developing in southern Ohio, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The power for the project is controlled by the US government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade deal, with US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick involved in deciding who will receive access to it, the report added.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Nvidia, OpenAI and US Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.
OpenAI, which has been in advanced talks for several weeks to lease the site, is among the companies showing the strongest interest in the project, while Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also spoken to Lutnick in recent weeks, the report said.
If Nvidia's guarantee agreement is ultimately finalised, it would become one of the largest financing arrangements in tech history and mark a significant shift for the chip giant from a pure hardware supplier to a central financial architect of AI infrastructure.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has previously stated the total cost of the entire project could reach approximately $US500 billion.
with EFE