Nvidia has decided to provide financial guarantees exceeding 100 billion dollars for OpenAI's data center construction project.

Nvidia announced on the 17th local time that it has signed an agreement to provide guarantees for up to 105 billion dollars (approximately 149 trillion won) of the costs required for OpenAI to lease a data center currently under construction in Pickaway County, Ohio, USA.

Nvidia is also investing 1.5 billion dollars (approx. 2.1 trillion won) in SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank that is actually building the data center, participating as a co-shareholder alongside the SoftBank Group and OpenAI.

Under this agreement, SB Energy will construct the data center on the site, build the power supply grid infrastructure, and own it directly, while OpenAI will secure a long-term, 20-year lease for the entire data center for exclusive use.

Nvidia will provide guarantees only for the first phase, which accounts for half of the entire project, and has secured an option to decide later whether to provide guarantees for the remaining portion.

Surrounding this massive guarantee, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have raised criticisms of "circular financing," pointing out that Nvidia is backing loans so that OpenAI can in turn purchase Nvidia's AI chips.

In response to these concerns, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang posted on the company website, stating, "Is this circular financing? No, it is not," and rebutting, "As OpenAI pays its rent and capacity comes online, Nvidia's residual risk decreases."

He further argued, "This is the same principle we apply to supply chain management," adding, "We commit core resources when we can understand customer demand and thereby secure long-term production capacity."

He projected that 1.5 million Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) would operate through the newly secured data center, and that Nvidia could generate 600 billion dollars (approx. 849 trillion won) in sales from OpenAI by 2030, including this data center.

(Photo: Getty Images)