Nvidia in talks for $3B stake in SoftBank's SB Energy to back OpenAI Ohio AI build-out

Nvidia is in talks to put as much as US$3 billion of equity into SB Energy, a SoftBank Group subsidiary. The structure, half at the Ohio deal signing and half via SB Energy's planned September initial public offering, is the first time the chip vendor has put its own balance sheet behind an AI power-and-data-centre vehicle in an equity form, rather than only selling chips into one.

The Information reported the equity talks on 15 August, carried by Reuters via Business Times Singapore and by CNBC. Reuters said it could not independently verify the talks, and Nvidia, SB Energy, and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours. All dollar amounts in the deal remain in motion until a closing lands or the S-1 becomes public.

The $3 billion leg sits inside a larger reported capital structure. Nvidia, OpenAI, and SB Energy are in discussions on roughly $100 billion in credit support for the Ohio campus, the same site SB Energy and OpenAI first announced at the White House in January 2025 as part of a $500 billion Stargate commitment. Equity, credit, and chips are now all sitting behind the same site, which is the shift the dollar figures do not show on their own.

The counterweight is the Wall Street Journal's report on 14 August that Nvidia revised its planned Ohio backstop from roughly $250 billion toward less than $120 billion, a figure that covers only the first phase of a 10-gigawatt campus. The two reads fit together. Nvidia is willing to put equity and limited credit into the structure, but it has pulled back from underwriting the full multi-phase buildout on its own balance sheet. Ten gigawatts is roughly the output of ten large nuclear reactors, enough to power a small US state, and the site is being built in phases, not as a single switch-on.

That mix, equity plus reduced credit, is the mechanism underneath the dollar figures. The chip vendor is no longer content to collect a gross margin on each accelerator shipped. It is taking a position in the power-and-data-centre layer that sits between the grid and OpenAI's training clusters, and that layer is now being prepared for public markets.

SB Energy confirmed the public-market leg in a separate filing notice. It submitted a confidential draft registration statement to the SEC for a proposed IPO of common stock, a Rule 135 notice that does not yet disclose a price range. The Information reported SB Energy is aiming to go public as soon as September 2026 and could raise at least $5 billion. Half of Nvidia's reported $3 billion, in the structure under discussion, would land at that IPO rather than at the Ohio deal signing, which means Nvidia's equity is being priced by the public market, not by SoftBank.

The public-market test matters because the structure is new. OpenAI and SoftBank Group each put $500 million into SB Energy in the original Stargate partnership, and OpenAI signed a 1.2 GW data-centre lease in Milam County, Texas. SB Energy has also previously raised $800 million in redeemable preferred equity from Ares. The September IPO would be the first time a public-market price tag is attached to the AI power-and-data-centre vehicle, and the first time outside investors can size the gross margin, the lease structure, and the off-take risk of an AI build-out play that is not a chip company or a model lab.

If the listing prices where the talks imply, public investors are being asked to underwrite the power-and-data-centre layer as a standalone asset class, with Nvidia as both the chip counterparty and a partial equity owner. If it prices at a discount, the read is that the same capex stack has a softer public-market ceiling than the closed-door talks suggest. Either way, the next leg of AI infrastructure is now being tested in public, and SB Energy's September window is the first price tag the public markets get to put on it.