Nvidia investing $1.5B in SoftBank data center developer behind OpenAI project

In Brief Posted: 8:16 AM PDT · August 17, 2026 Image Credits:Chesnot / Getty Images Tim De Chant Nvidia investing $1.5B in SoftBank data center developer behind OpenAI project Nvidia said on Monday that it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a data center linked to SoftBank and OpenAI. The…

In Brief Posted: 8:16 AM PDT · August 17, 2026 Image Credits:Chesnot / Getty Images Tim De Chant Nvidia investing $1.5B in SoftBank data center developer behind OpenAI project Nvidia said on Monday that it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a data center linked to SoftBank and OpenAI. The investment ensures that Nvidia will be the sole supplier of compute infrastructure at OpenAI’s Ports-Pike data center near Cincinnati, Ohio. Nvidia will also provide up to $105 billion in credit to help build the facility, which could scale from an initial 4.25 gigawatts to 8 gigawatts in size, according to documents the company filed with the SEC. SB Energy’s existing investors include SoftBank and OpenAI. SoftBank had previously held $5.8 billion worth of Nvidia stock, which it sold in November to help fund other AI investments. The data center and power developer will build a 9.2 gigawatt natural gas power plant on the site, which is land owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. The site previously enriched uranium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal and for U.S. Navy submarines. The power plant is expected to cost $33 billion. The steep sum reflects the skyrocketing costs of building natural gas power plants, which have risen 66% in the last two years, according to BloombergNEF. By the time SB Energy’s power plant and others are completed, they’ll be competing for natural gas with export markets, a confluence that could triple natural gas prices in some parts of the country. Topics AI, data centers, In Brief, nvidia, OpenAI, Softbank October 13 – 15 San Francisco Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you.Save up to $300 today! REGISTER NOW Newsletters See More Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Related AI Groq raises $350M to fuel its pivot from AI chips to neocloud Rebecca Bellan 12 hours ago AI Texas halts new data centers as governor calls for audits Tim De Chant Aug 4, 2026 AI Is the future of data centers portable? Runware builds a pod to find out Dominic-Madori Davis Aug 4, 2026 Latest in AI In Brief Anthropic’s annualized revenue surges to $65B Marina Temkin 5 hours ago AI AI automation startup Relay shuts down, staff joins Google’s Chrome team Lucas Ropek 7 hours ago In Brief Amazon, which started off selling books, is destroying rare texts to train AI Amanda Silberling 12 hours ago

Source: TechCrunch — Published August 17, 2026 at 15:16 UTC — Category: Business