People familiar with the matter: Nvidia scaled back its plan to provide $250 billion in guarantees for the OpenAI data center. According to people familiar with the matter, Nvidia and OpenAI were close to reaching an agreement to provide financing for a large data center park in Ohio, but the two parties modified the deal structure: Nvidia initially guaranteed only half of the multi-billion dollar construction project, rather than the full amount.

People familiar with the matter: NVIDIA scaled back its plan to provide $250 billion in guarantees for the OpenAI data center. According to people familiar with the matter, NVIDIA and OpenAI were close to reaching an agreement to provide financing for a large data center park in Ohio, but the two parties modified the deal structure: NVIDIA initially only provided guarantees for half of the tens of billions of dollars of construction projects, rather than guaranteeing the full amount. Some people familiar with the matter said that the revised plan will reduce the size of Nvidia's financial guarantee from US$250 billion to less than US$120 billion. This adjustment was made to alleviate investors' concerns about the chip manufacturer's risk exposure - Nvidia used its own balance sheet to stimulate market demand for its artificial intelligence chips. The deal could be signed as soon as this weekend. According to the current negotiation framework, NVIDIA will provide financial support for the first phase of the project, with a total power supply scale of approximately 5 GW; it will then decide whether and how to provide financing for the remaining part. Two people familiar with the project said OpenAI is still negotiating and plans to sign a binding lease for the project’s 10 gigawatts of computing power in the coming days. The 10 GW project is developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank, and will become the largest data center project announced to date upon completion. According to media reports, the first phase of the guarantee will cover the data center lease and debt required for project construction; it will reduce the project's borrowing costs by increasing lenders' confidence in the safety of project funds. NVIDIA is also negotiating another independent transaction to provide financing for the purchase of chips for OpenAI. The total chip procurement scale of the entire project can reach up to US$350 billion. The project's power resources are controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately by Japan under a recent trade agreement. Goldman Sachs is serving as an adviser to SBE Energy on the deal, and Morgan Stanley is serving as an adviser to Nvidia, people familiar with the matter said. The two companies announced on Monday that Nvidia announced this week that it would cooperate with Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, BlackRock, Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs and KKR to establish a "computing power financing platform." All parties plan to invest more than $500 billion in external capital in the next few years, with the goal of financing chip purchases at "attractive interest rates." In September last year, NVIDIA signed a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI. NVIDIA will build at least 10 gigawatts of computing power for OpenAI. At the same time, the chip company promised to invest up to US$100 billion to help OpenAI pay related expenses. But the agreement reportedly stalled because some executives within Nvidia had doubts about the deal. via cnBeta.COM - Chinese industry information station (author: Source: Global Market Report)