Four-point-two-five gigawatts at one Ohio campus—and now we find out who’s holding the financial bag. This is The Data Center Daily. NVIDIA put a huge OpenAI commitment in an SEC filing. We’re asking whether the grid buildout is as firm as the paper behind it. NVIDIA’s 8-K filed this week takes the Stargate infrastructure story beyond the term sheet and onto titled ground. Listen to how specifically it describes what’s locked up at the PORTS Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio.
On August 17, 2026, NVIDIA Corporation ("NVIDIA") announced a multi-year partnership with SB Energy Corp. (collectively with its affiliates, "SB Energy") to advance the development of the PORTS Technology Campus, a large-scale AI data center campus in Pike County, Ohio (the "Portsmouth Site"). Through the partnership and the credit support described below, NVIDIA has secured land, power, and shell capacity at the Portsmouth Site to host NVIDIA AI compute infrastructure. An affiliate of OpenAI Group PBC (such affiliate, "OpenAI") will be the tenant.
Four-point-two-five gigawatts of IT load, a named tenant, secured power, and committed shell capacity. We’re past the letter-of-intent stage: NVIDIA brings the full DSX platform, and SB Energy is handling development. An OpenAI affiliate holds the lease. Watch Pike County, Ohio. It could be a bellwether for how hyperscale AI campuses actually get financed and structured, with ready-for-service conditions expected to begin in 2028. The interconnection queue, transmission buildout, and water rights there now matter to anyone modeling that region’s grid. NVIDIA’s latest 8-K lays out who’s actually carrying the risk on the Portsmouth AI campus build. Before we get into the mechanics, here’s exactly what the filing says.
On August 17, 2026, NVIDIA entered into multiple residual value guaranties (collectively, the "Agreements") with SB Energy (the "Lessor") relating to leases for approximately 4.25 gigawatts of IT load in the aggregate at the Portsmouth Site. An Agreement generally will become effective upon commencement of the applicable lease. NVIDIA also can provide credit support to secure approximately an additional 3.8 gigawatts at the Portsmouth Site, exercisable in its sole discretion.
So NVIDIA isn’t just the chip vendor here. It’s in the capital stack as a residual-value guarantor on a campus this big, with the option to extend that exposure further. That’s a very different kind of balance-sheet commitment than anyone was modeling for a semiconductor company. Keep an eye on how this residual-value guarantee shows up in NVIDIA’s contingent-liabilities disclosures—and on whether it ever exercises the credit-support option for that additional capacity. That’ll tell us how confident NVIDIA is that OpenAI will stay for the long haul. E&E News writes:
The watchdog that keeps North America’s electric grid running is working faster than it ever has to keep the lights on as the country’s voracious appetite for electricity skyrockets. The herculean effort by the North American Electric Reliability Corp. comes as a wave of power-hungry data centers, rising cyberattack threats and extreme weather driven by climate change are driving up electricity prices and threatening energy infrastructure.
NERC’s Jim Robb puts the AI-era requirement at 200 gigawatts over five to seven years. We just covered 4.25 gigawatts at one Ohio campus, so one disclosed lease already accounts for more than two percent of NERC’s planning number. And Robb says reliability and price impacts are part of operational planning now. Good. Because 4.25 gigawatts doesn’t show up as a spreadsheet cell; it shows up as substations, transmission upgrades, generation, and somebody’s bill. NERC says it’s moving reliability standards faster than at any point in its history. The grid watchdog is sprinting while campuses are being sized in multi-gigawatt increments. NVIDIA’s $105 billion guarantee may steady the campus financing, but it won’t pour concrete for the grid around Pike County. What matters is whether the power system can match it with steel, permits, and capacity. WhiteFiber, Inc. writes:
The properties are expected to provide a combined minimum of 60 MW of initial gross utility capacity. Initial due diligence indicates that NC-2 and NC-3 have the potential to support up to approximately 200 MW of combined gross utility capacity over time. WhiteFiber is targeting initial ready-for-service capacity in the third quarter of 2027, subject to completion of the acquisition and customary development conditions.
After that 4.25-gigawatt Ohio figure, WhiteFiber’s North Carolina plan is a useful reality check: 60 megawatts initially, with ready-for-service targeted for Q3 2027. And 60 MW is still a serious facility. We’ve gotten so drunk on gigawatt headlines that a real industrial retrofit with a date starts sounding small. Watch the verbs: WhiteFiber has a definitive agreement to acquire the Yadkin County properties, but it still needs to close and meet development conditions. The 200-MW figure is potential capacity over time, not energized capacity. They’ve got non-binding letters of intent, even with investment-grade credit support. Fine—those are conversations with paperwork. The part I like is the retrofit-first plan: existing industrial infrastructure beats pretending every campus starts as an empty field and a glossy rendering. From Parapolitika:
The first phase includes construction of a data center with 300 megawatts capacity, an investment estimated to reach 3.5 billion euros, of which DEH is expected to cover 1.2 billion. This phase could begin construction this year to be completed by 2028. In a subsequent phase, capacity could increase to 1 gigawatt.
Kozani’s a 300-megawatt, €3.5 billion plan—and the hyperscaler is still being selected over the next three to six months. Nobody gets to call this a tenant buildout yet. DEH would put up €1.2 billion in phase one, retain the land, buildings, and power supply, then lease the package under an energy contract exceeding ten years. Utility-as-landlord is a very different capital structure from the Ohio filing we just covered. And DEH says construction could start this year for a 2028 finish, with a path to one gigawatt later. Fine—first get the operator signed, then show how the gas units, hydro, solar, and high-voltage network can carry 300 megawatts without turning the local grid into a stress test. Quick scale check: WhiteFiber’s North Carolina plan starts at 60 megawatts; Kozani is proposing five times that in phase one. Both are called data center deals, but they’re nowhere near the same stage of readiness. Have feedback, a story idea, or a correction? Email us at datacenterdaily at lantern podcasts dot com. Your notes help make The Data Center Daily sharper and more useful.
We’re watching for DEH to finalize its hyperscaler selection for the Kozani data center within three to six months. We’re also watching WhiteFiber’s initial ready-for-service capacity for NC-2 and NC-3 in the third quarter of 2027, and ready-for-service conditions for the planned OpenAI-tenant campus in Pike County, Ohio, expected to begin in 2028.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so take a look at the ones you want to dig into. That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.