A post about Nvidia went viral on X this week. It pointed to a guarantee that once ran to $250 billion. Nvidia had already cut that number by more than half, three months earlier1.
The cut happened in August. Nvidia's finance chief, Colette Kress, pushed it through2. Jensen Huang mocked her for raising the doubt.
He lost his job in November. She runs Nvidia in his place, still holding the title of chief financial officer too.
What the Smaller Number Actually Buys
Start with the paper itself. Nvidia filed it with regulators on Aug. 172.
The filing caps Nvidia's payout at $105 billion. That sum backs leases for 4.25 gigawatts of computing capacity at a Pike County, Ohio site2. Nvidia can add another 3.75 gigawatts later, at its own choice.
Nvidia's Signed Guarantee Covers 4.25 of 8 Gigawatts at the Ohio Site
Committed and optional IT load under Nvidia's Aug. 17, 2026 guaranty at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, in gigawatts
The colored share is the capacity Nvidia guaranteed now; the gray share is capacity Nvidia can add later, at its own choice.
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [2]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Guaranteed now | 4.25 |
| Nvidia's option | 3.75 |
| Whole | 8 |
A trigger event has to happen first. Nvidia owes money only if OpenAI goes insolvent or misses a lease payment2. Even then, five remedies run before any check.
Nvidia can assume the lease itself, or find a new tenant, or sell the site. It can also let the lease end, or defer payment for up to a year.
Only after those options fail does Nvidia pay. It then pays the shortfall alone, net of whatever a new tenant or buyer brings in2. The $105 billion is a ceiling on the worst case, the most Nvidia could ever owe under the filing's own terms.
Three weeks earlier, the number on the table was $250 billion, for a larger, 10-gigawatt version of the same project4. CNBC reported the shrinking figure the same day Nvidia filed it.
Nvidia's OpenAI Guarantee Falls From $250 Billion to $105 Billion
Size of Nvidia's guarantee for OpenAI's Ohio data center leases, reported July 27 and filed Aug. 17, 2026
Each column is the guarantee's size at one date; the first is the figure first reported, the second is the cap Nvidia filed with regulators three weeks later.
Sources: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [2]; CNBC [4]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Reported July 27 | $250B |
| Filed Aug. 17 | $105B |
The Son-in-Law Who Ran the Financing Desk
Nico Caprez, Huang's son-in-law, sold the plan inside Nvidia before Kress could cut it7.
Caprez pushed financing deals across Nvidia's whole customer list, OpenAI included. Each deal traded credit support for a cut of the buyer's future revenue7. Cloud operators who struggled to afford Nvidia's chips got the help anyway.
Huang had his own reason to want the deals to keep growing. He worried aloud about an "avalanche" of chips Nvidia had already ordered from its own supplier7. Fewer buyers stood ready to take them.
Kress read the same numbers differently. She asked how Nvidia would judge which guarantees were safe enough to sign2. Then she pushed the OpenAI figure down before it went to paper6. Huang called her "a deer in the headlights" for asking.
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's chairman, built the financing on the other side of the deal. SoftBank's subsidiary, SB Energy, owns and builds the Ohio site that Nvidia's guarantee backs3.
"The next era of intelligence will transform every industry," Son said when Nvidia and SB Energy signed the deal3. He skipped the question of who absorbs the loss when a lease payment comes due and OpenAI falls short.
Does a Smaller Guarantee Break the Loop?
Huang defended the structure in writing the same day Kress signed the smaller version. "We are securing long-lived infrastructure for NVIDIA compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories that can be upgraded repeatedly with each new generation delivering more intelligence and better economics," he said3.
Read plainly, that is a bet on decades over quarters. Nvidia keeps its chips installed at one site for twenty years, through generation after generation of hardware.
Michael Burry read the same facts and reached the opposite verdict. He had disclosed a short position against Nvidia days before the July report broke5.
"Around and around we go. Nvidia to guarantee $200 billion of ChatGPT's spending on $NVDA chips," Burry wrote on X5.
Cassandra Unchained@michaeljburryAround and around we go.
Nvidia to guarantee $200 billion of ChatGPT’s spending on $NVDA chips. pic.twitter.com/9iSIUd3bk2
Circular financing is the term critics use for what Burry described. Nvidia lends its own customer the backing it needs to buy Nvidia's own chips. The revenue both sides report can trace back to the same guarantee.
The filing's terms cut against the simplest version of that story. A guarantee that pays only on default, net of recoveries, after five remedies run, is a narrower bet than a flat $105 billion check.
Burry's loop still closes somewhere, though. OpenAI's ability to pay rests, in part, on the chips it bought with Nvidia's own help.
What to do
Read any vendor's financing guarantee for its trigger first, ahead of its headline number. Ask when payment starts, what has to fail first, and whether the payout is capped or net of recoveries.
A budget holder watching AI infrastructure spending should track SB Energy's first lease payment, due once capacity comes online in 2028. The payment date will show whether the structure Kress built actually holds, past whatever a viral post claims this week.
By the numbers
- $105 billion: the cap Nvidia filed with regulators on Aug. 17, for 4.25 gigawatts now and an option on 3.75 more2.
- 20 years: how long Nvidia's guarantee runs before it expires on its own2.
- $250 billion: the guarantee figure Nvidia and OpenAI had discussed in July, for a 10-gigawatt version of the same campus4.
- 12,884 favorites: the count on the viral X post that revived this story two days before Huang's ouster made headlines again1.
- $1.5 billion: Nvidia's direct investment in SB Energy, separate from the lease guarantee itself3.
- 35,000: construction jobs OpenAI projects the Ohio campus will create through 20323.
- Five: the remedies Nvidia's filing requires to fail before any payout starts2.
What to watch
Nvidia reports earnings Nov. 17, its first call since Kress took the top job2. Analysts will press her on how many more guarantees sit behind Nvidia's other customers, past the one deal this filing covers.
Watch 2028, too. The Ohio site's first capacity comes online that year, and the payment clock, if it ever starts, begins with it2. Until then, the $105 billion stays a number on paper, tested so far by one viral post and little else.
Sources
- Bull Theory, post on X, Nov. 13, 2026, https://x.com/BullTheoryio/status/2121166572647772461
- NVIDIA Corporation, "NVIDIA CORP, Form 8-K," U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Aug. 17, 2026, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001045810/000104581026000069/nvda-20260817.htm
- NVIDIA Newsroom, "NVIDIA Guarantees SB Energy's PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio to Exclusively Host NVIDIA AI Compute," Aug. 17, 2026, https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-guarantees-sb-energy-s-ports-pike-technology-campus-in-ohio-to-exclusively-host-nvidia-ai-compute
- Samantha Subin, "Nvidia backing $105 billion in financing for OpenAI data center in Ohio," CNBC, Aug. 17, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/nvidia-financing-open-ai-data-center-ohio.html
- Ananya Gairola, "Nvidia Reportedly Moves to Backstop $250 Billion in OpenAI Data Center Financing, Michael Burry Says, 'Around and Around We Go'," Benzinga, July 27, 2026, https://www.aol.com/articles/nvidia-reportedly-moves-backstop-250-035059000.html
- Jonathan Small, "Months Before His Fall, Jensen Huang Called His CFO 'a Deer in the Headlights.' Now She's Running Nvidia.," Entrepreneur, Nov. 13, 2026, https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/months-before-his-fall-jensen-huang-called-his-cfo-a-deer-in-the-headlights
- Matthias Bastian, "Jensen Huang's ouster likely traces back to Nvidia's risky business practices more than his personal life," The Decoder, Nov. 13, 2026, https://the-decoder.com/jensen-huangs-ouster-likely-traces-back-to-nvidias-risky-business-practices-more-than-his-personal-life/
