Nvidia Moves Into Power Infrastructure With $1.5 Billion SB Energy Investment

Nvidia is expanding its footprint beyond semiconductor sales and into the physical infrastructure of the AI stack. As TechCrunch first reported on Monday, Nvidia announced a $1.5 billion investment in SB Energy, a data center developer linked to OpenAI and SoftBank.

This investment is not merely a financial play; it secures a strategic lock on the hardware layer. TechCrunch reports that the deal ensures Nvidia will serve as the sole supplier of compute infrastructure for the Ports-Pike data center located near Cincinnati, Ohio. To further support the project, Nvidia will provide up to $105 billion in credit to assist in the construction of the facility. Documents filed by Nvidia with the SEC indicate the site could scale from an initial 4.25 gigawatts to a total of 8 gigawatts.

The scale of the project extends to the power source. SB Energy plans to construct a 9.2 gigawatt natural gas power plant on land owned by the U.S. Department of Energy—a site previously used to enrich uranium for U.S. Navy submarines and the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The estimated cost for this power plant is $33 billion.

According to TechCrunch, the high cost of the plant is driven by a 66% increase in the cost of building natural gas power plants over the last two years, a figure cited from BloombergNEF. Additionally, the project faces potential economic headwinds; TechCrunch notes that as SB Energy and other developers complete their plants, competition with export markets for natural gas could triple prices in certain regions of the country.

This move follows a shift in capital from other partners. TechCrunch reports that SoftBank, an existing investor in SB Energy, sold $5.8 billion in Nvidia stock in November to fund various other AI investments.