Nvidia's Balance Sheet Is Now the Product: $105 Billion OpenAI Backstop and China's H200 Return

Nvidia underwrites AI infrastructure with a $105B OpenAI lease guarantee, invests in SB Energy and Lancium, and resumes China chip shipments, cementing its role as AI's financier.

The chipmaker's latest moves read less like a semiconductor company's quarterly plan and more like the playbook of a merchant bank. Within the span of a fortnight, Nvidia has re-entered China's restricted market, underwritten a nine-figure data center lease for OpenAI, and positioned itself as the financier of choice for the AI infrastructure boom it helped create.

A Two-Pronged Push: China Reopens, Ohio Gets Underwritten

Reuters reported that Nvidia has resumed shipping its H200 processors to China in smaller volumes, with ByteDance and Tencent each receiving roughly 10,000 units over the past few weeks. The news marks a tentative re-entry into a market that has been one of the biggest question marks for Nvidia's growth since US export restrictions took hold. Whether these deliveries represent a one-off test or the beginning of larger allocations remains unclear — Reuters offered no details on approval processes or follow-up volumes.

The China development landed alongside a far larger commitment stateside. On Monday, Nvidia disclosed a guarantee of up to $105 billion to secure OpenAI's lease of an SB Energy-developed data center campus in Ohio. The company is also investing $1.5 billion directly into SB Energy and will serve as the facility's exclusive chip supplier. The first 800 megawatts of capacity are slated to come online in 2028, with the campus ultimately designed to scale to eight gigawatts.

Notably, the guarantee covers only a portion of the lease and power payments — not the full project cost. And the final figure came only after significant negotiation: according to a Reuters report from August 14 citing the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia had initially discussed a guarantee of $250 billion, then trimmed it to below $120 billion before settling on the $105 billion final agreement.

The Capital Machine Takes Shape

The Ohio deal is just one piece of a broader financing architecture. On August 14, Nvidia joined Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR in announcing plans for financing platforms designed to mobilize more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI data centers. CEO Jensen Huang has said Nvidia could back up to $125 billion — or 25 percent — of potential transactions itself.

The pattern extends to other major projects. Reuters reported that Nvidia plans to invest up to $3 billion in Lancium, the operator of the Stargate data center campus in Texas, with an initial $2 billion for roughly 20 percent of the company and additional funds contingent on hitting development milestones like grid connections. Reports of a possible further $3 billion for SB Energy in connection with the Ohio financing surfaced on August 15, though Reuters has not yet verified that figure.

The strategy is a form of vertical engineering: by financing the infrastructure, Nvidia secures itself as the exclusive chip supplier for the facilities its capital helps build. The company's market capitalization of roughly €4.706 trillion gives it ample room to absorb guarantees in the hundreds of billions without straining its balance sheet.

Market Reaction: Skepticism at the Margins

Investors have responded to the news with measured caution. The stock closed Tuesday at €189.72, down 2.4 percent on the day, after having closed at €194.40 the previous session. The pullback follows a period of strength — the shares remain up 6.8 percent over the past 30 days and 19 percent year-to-date, though they sit 6.3 percent below the 52-week high reached on May 14.

The short-term dip suggests investors are beginning to price in the flip side of Nvidia's strategy: the deeper the company wades into financing its own customers, the more balance-sheet risk it accumulates. Should AI demand stall or OpenAI run into trouble, Nvidia would carry not just the risk of a supplier, but that of a lender and co-owner.

For now, the strategy appears coherent. Nvidia's cash position and market value make three-digit billion guarantees manageable, and the exclusive chip-supplier arrangements provide a direct line from capital deployment to revenue. The open question is whether these multibillion-dollar bets on data center demand translate into paying customers — and whether Beijing expands its approvals beyond what looks, for now, like a symbolic allocation.