What actually shrank
Nvidia is expected to guarantee less than 120 billion dollars for the OpenAI data centre in Ohio, against the 250 billion dollars discussed earlier, and to stand behind only the first phase of the project. The Wall Street Journal reported the revision on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, and tied it to investor concern about the company's risk exposure on large financing commitments. The full site is a 10-gigawatt development by SB Energy, a subsidiary of Softbank Group, and OpenAI is still negotiating a binding lease for all of it.[1]
Two quantities get confused when a financing headline is read as a commitment. One is the notional size of the project; the other is the amount the guarantor can be called on to pay, and only the second lands on a balance sheet. Moving from 250 billion dollars to under 120 billion dollars, and from the whole site to phase one, changes the second quantity while leaving the first where it was. The 10 gigawatts still need funding; what changed is who is contractually exposed if the tenant cannot pay for them.[1]
The July question, partly answered
In July I argued that the initiative between Nvidia and SK Group, put at more than 500 billion dollars, could not be modelled as a revenue commitment, because it rested on letters of intent that disclosed no payment schedule, volume or unit price. The Ohio revision is the same distinction seen from the other side. The compute financing platforms Nvidia announced a week earlier with six financial institutions target more than 500 billion dollars of third-party capital; the Ohio guarantee is the first place where the headline met a figure the company had to write down and defend.[1], [2]
The most likely reading is that the guarantee was cut because investors priced it. A backstop of this kind turns an equipment sale into a credit position, and the reported concern attached to the size of that position rather than to the demand behind it. Another explanation fits the same facts: the phasing may reflect how the lease is being assembled, with later phases guaranteed as they are contracted. The published material does not separate the two, and the binding lease that would settle it is still under negotiation.[1]
The line to watch in the lease
OpenAI carries a valuation of 852 billion dollars and no profit, which is why the identity of the guarantor matters more here than in an ordinary property financing. A lender to the Ohio site is funding a tenant whose ability to pay rests on future revenue, and the guarantee is the instrument that turns that into an investment-grade risk. Narrowing it to one phase leaves the later phases to be financed on the tenant's own credit, or on a guarantee that has to be negotiated again.[1]
If the binding lease for the full 10 gigawatts is signed on these terms, the document should carry a guaranteed amount for each phase rather than one figure for the project. That is the observable signal: a phase-by-phase guarantee schedule in the lease disclosure, or in Nvidia's next quarterly filing, by the end of March 2027. Should a single project-wide figure reappear instead, the reduction reported on Friday should be read as a negotiating position rather than a change in how the risk is carried.[1]