NVIDIA describes AI factories as the defining infrastructure of the AI era — facilities where compute transforms energy and data into the intelligence that powers every business, industry and country. In the AI economy, the company argues, compute is revenue.

An AI factory requires a full stack of critical resources: advanced chips, packaging, memory and networking, as well as land, power and shell (LPS). Just as NVIDIA has used its scale, long-term visibility and supply-chain partnerships to secure critical semiconductor resources, it is now applying that same discipline to secure LPS capacity exclusively for NVIDIA AI factories. NVIDIA announced it is partnering with SB Energy — the renewable energy arm of Japan's SoftBank Group, itself a lead partner in OpenAI's Stargate data-center initiative — to secure LPS capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Portsmouth, Ohio, to host NVIDIA compute, with OpenAI serving as the tenant. The site carries its own industrial history: PORTS-Pike sits on land tied to the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a Cold War-era federal uranium-enrichment facility in southern Ohio that has long been slated for redevelopment.

LPS: The Next Strategic Resource

For the vast majority of NVIDIA customers, securing LPS has long been part of their infrastructure strategy. The world's largest cloud service providers and investment-grade enterprises hold the balance sheets, infrastructure expertise and long-term contracts needed to secure LPS independently, building and operating AI factories on NVIDIA accelerated computing, networking, systems and software. NVIDIA says this model will continue to represent most of its business.

Frontier AI labs, however, are different, according to the company. These labs have extraordinary demand for training and inference compute, but many are growing faster than their balance sheets and long-term credit profiles can support. They may have strong customer demand and rapidly growing revenue yet still lack the decades-long infrastructure contracts and investment-grade financing capacity needed to secure AI factory infrastructure independently. Their growth is increasingly constrained not by algorithms or customer demand, but by the availability of compute. For these companies, more compute means more intelligence, more products, more users and more revenue — a flywheel NVIDIA says it is helping power by providing the underlying infrastructure.

PORTS-Pike: A Site for Generations of NVIDIA Compute

OpenAI will build and operate a world-class AI factory at PORTS-Pike. The facility will use NVIDIA's full-stack DSX AI factory platform, including GPUs, CPUs, networking and infrastructure software.

The initial deployment is expected to provide 4.25 gigawatts of AI factory capacity. Each generation of NVIDIA AI factory systems deployed at the site could represent approximately 1.5 million NVIDIA GPUs, or approximately $150 billion to $200 billion in NVIDIA revenue. Over 20 years, the site can support multiple upgrade cycles.

NVIDIA frames the essential economic point this way: the LPS commitment secures a long-lived AI factory site, while the NVIDIA compute inside can be upgraded repeatedly, with each new generation delivering greater production, more intelligence and better economics. NVIDIA may also choose to extend the arrangement beyond the initial 4.25 gigawatts to secure the site's remaining capacity of 3.75 gigawatts.

OpenAI and NVIDIA Expanding Compute Opportunity

The commitment extends a relationship that has scaled rapidly. OpenAI launched Stargate with SoftBank and Oracle in January 2025, targeting hundreds of billions of dollars in US data-center investment, starting with a campus in Abilene, Texas. More broadly, OpenAI has committed to substantial deployments of NVIDIA AI infrastructure through 2030. OpenAI's existing and planned commitments represent approximately 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA compute, with an opportunity to expand to approximately 16 gigawatts if NVIDIA extends the PORTS-Pike arrangement beyond the initial 4.25 gigawatts. At those levels, the opportunity represents roughly $600 billion of NVIDIA compute through 2030, according to NVIDIA.

The Guarantee, and Other Key Questions

What is NVIDIA guaranteeing, and for how long? NVIDIA is supporting the LPS infrastructure at PORTS-Pike for approximately 4 gigawatts over a 20-year term, securing a site on which NVIDIA compute will be exclusively deployed. Its support is limited to defined portions of lease and power payments, along with a specified residual-value commitment — not the full cost of the site or all of the tenant's obligations. The guarantee will become effective in phases as data centers are placed in service between 2028 and 2030. As OpenAI makes lease payments and capacity comes online, NVIDIA's remaining exposure declines.

Why is NVIDIA guaranteeing PORTS-Pike? According to the company, LPS has become a critical constraint on AI factory deployment, and NVIDIA is selectively securing exceptional sites where it can host multiple generations of NVIDIA compute and serve durable customer demand. That reflects the wider industry picture, in which access to power rather than chips is increasingly cited as the binding constraint on AI data-center construction, making large sites with a credible path to gigawatt-scale electricity scarce and contested. The productive life of the site extends through multiple generations of NVIDIA systems, each capable of producing more intelligence and more revenue than the generation before.

Is this circular financing? NVIDIA says no, and states that OpenAI will pay the lease. The question carries weight partly because the companies' finances are already intertwined: NVIDIA announced in September 2025 that it plans to invest up to $100 billion directly in OpenAI. NVIDIA is using its scale and long-term visibility to secure PORTS-Pike to host NVIDIA compute — the same discipline it applies to supply-chain management: securing critical inputs when it has visibility into customer demand and when doing so enables long-term productive capacity.

What happens to PORTS-Pike if OpenAI does not use the site in the future? NVIDIA compute is versatile, fungible and broadly adopted, and the capacity can be resold to another qualified tenant across NVIDIA's global ecosystem of cloud service providers, enterprises, AI labs and startups, the company says.

CUDA, NVIDIA's parallel computing platform, makes NVIDIA compute more than hardware, giving developers and NVIDIA engineers a common platform to continually improve installed systems. In NVIDIA's framing, CUDA makes NVIDIA compute versatile; versatility makes it fungible; and fungibility drives utilization and durability — making NVIDIA compute a productive asset that is rentable and financeable. The value of an exceptional site like PORTS-Pike is not limited to one customer or one generation of compute: NVIDIA's standardized platform, broad developer ecosystem and large market of potential users support the ability to redeploy productive capacity over time.

How much LPS will NVIDIA secure? The company says its approach will be strategic and disciplined. Most NVIDIA customers will continue to secure their own LPS, and the vast majority of LPS hosting NVIDIA compute will continue to be secured directly by CSPs, enterprises, sovereign AI builders and other customers. NVIDIA will focus selectively on exceptional sites where visible, durable demand can support multiple generations of NVIDIA compute. The deal itself defines the milestones to watch: data centers entering service in phases between 2028 and 2030, any decision to exercise the option on the site's remaining 3.75 gigawatts, and whether comparable site-level guarantees appear elsewhere.

The Infrastructure of Intelligence

PORTS-Pike represents the next step in NVIDIA's journey. The company began by building accelerated computing chips, then expanded to systems, networking, CUDA and full-stack AI factories. Today, it is helping secure the critical infrastructure required to build those factories.

NVIDIA describes itself as the full-stack AI infrastructure platform, investing in the long-lived foundations of AI factories so its customers can deploy what it calls the most productive compute platform in the world, generation after generation. By securing the critical resources needed to host NVIDIA compute, the company says it can help the world's most innovative companies build the AI factories that will power the age of intelligence.

Source: NVIDIA Blog