Nvidia Backs AI Data Center Buildout With Up to $164.5 Billion in Guarantees and Commitments

Nvidia has emerged as a central credit backstop for the artificial intelligence data center boom, extending guarantees and other commitments worth as much as $164.5 billion to support new facilities, according to an analysis of company disclosures reported by The Information. The scale of the backing underscores how the chipmaker has moved well beyond supplying processors to underwriting the financial architecture of the AI infrastructure buildout.

The commitments include promises to pay landlords on behalf of tenants that fail to meet rent obligations, as well as agreements to purchase data center capacity. A substantial portion of the total is concentrated in a single project: a lease guarantee of up to $105 billion for an Ohio data center being developed by SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary, which accounts for 64% of the overall figure. OpenAI is the tenant of that facility.

The remainder comprises $36 billion in commitments to buy unsold capacity from cloud providers, $20 billion in data center leases Nvidia has contracted directly for resale to customers, and $3.5 billion in guarantees on cloud providers' data center leases. Separately from these guarantees and commitments, Nvidia has invested or agreed to invest $7 billion directly in neocloud companies, the AI-focused cloud providers that have become major buyers of its graphics processing units.

The Information characterized Nvidia's role as that of a de facto central bank for the sector. Market sentiment, however, has turned uneasy. Shares of CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN fell sharply last week, and Lambda, which Nvidia has backed, withdrew or postponed its initial public offering. Australian neocloud operator Firmus, also an Nvidia investee, shelved an Australian IPO of about $5 billion amid weak demand, and Nebius declined to participate in Nvidia's guarantee program.

Wall Street financiers funding some data center projects have also grown more cautious. The Information noted that Nvidia already carries substantial commitments and faces growing investor demand for protection against a default on its debt, yet may need to extend further support to preserve industry confidence. Should neoclouds fail to find customers or secure financing and Nvidia be forced to step in, questions about the company's growth outlook could intensify. In a separate report, The Information cited sources saying Nvidia is discussing an additional investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in Firmus following the withdrawn IPO.

Non-hyperscale customers, including neoclouds and large enterprises, accounted for $40 billion, or 45%, of Nvidia's data center revenue in its second quarter, more than double the level a year earlier. The growing investment by Google, Amazon and Microsoft in alternatives to Nvidia's GPUs adds a further risk factor.