Nvidia Commits Up to $164.5B in AI Data Center Guarantees and Cloud Backstops

Nvidia $NVDA has placed as much as $164.5B in guarantees and commitments behind data centers running its chips, alongside more than $7B invested or pledged directly in AI cloud providers, according to its latest quarterly filing. According to The Information, up to $105B—or roughly 64% of the total commitment—consists of a lease payment guarantee for the Ohio campus SB Energy is building for OpenAI, requiring Nvidia to pay the landlord if OpenAI defaults on rent. The remaining exposure reported by The Information breaks down into approximately $36B in commitments to purchase unsold cloud capacity, $20B in direct data center leases passed through to customers, and $3.5B in guarantees on leases signed by cloud providers. As part of this structure, Nvidia agreed to buy any unsold capacity from CoreWeave through April 2032, while rival provider Nebius reportedly declined to participate in the guarantee program. The disclosures arrive alongside visible financing and infrastructure stress across the neocloud sector, with CoreWeave's 2031 and 2032 unsecured notes trading below 81 cents on the dollar in mid-October and Microsoft terminating its agreement for Nscale's Loughton site in Essex over power delivery delays extending into the 2030s.