Gulf mediators and Iran agree to keep talking as US strike threat looms Israel votes at record turnout in election too close to call Congo Ebola cases pass 10,000 as neighbours tighten quarantine Houthis claim missile strike on Ras Tanura as Egypt backs Riyadh Oleshky truce holds as Nordic leaders speak with Putin Drone strikes kill 21 in Nyala and cut power across Sudan as states warn of famine Church reports 60 Orthodox Christians killed in two Oromia attacks India evacuates eastern coast as very severe Cyclone Arnab nears landfall Jordan strikes southern Syria after church attack, Damascus protests Anthropic's IPO filing shows heavy losses and warns of existential risks Russian strikes damage Kyiv's South Bridge and cut power in seven regions Flávio Bolsonaro leaves for US as Brazil cancels his passports Oil holds near $115 while gas, fuel costs and inflation stay high China's AI stocks keep falling despite state support French student groups reject concessions as finance minister rules out new spending AI stocks rebound as Meta raises equity and Anthropic files for IPO Hebron displacement nears 5,000 as officers expect pullout after vote Two men charged over RAF Fairford incident Student List wins Serbian election as Croatia demands acknowledgement of 1990s wars Indonesia and Singapore plan haze task force amid tensions Brazil's real suffers worst day in over 25 years after Lula comeback Iran threatens legal action against Sinokor ships over Hormuz UN commission says Israel continued genocide in Gaza after ceasefire Gas exporters meet in Moscow as Iranian and Qatari leaders hold talks Indonesian bond yield hits four-year high as MSCI risk and oil weigh French consumer confidence hits 13-year low amid protests Gulf mediators and Iran agree to keep talking as US strike threat looms Israel votes at record turnout in election too close to call Congo Ebola cases pass 10,000 as neighbours tighten quarantine Houthis claim missile strike on Ras Tanura as Egypt backs Riyadh Oleshky truce holds as Nordic leaders speak with Putin Drone strikes kill 21 in Nyala and cut power across Sudan as states warn of famine Church reports 60 Orthodox Christians killed in two Oromia attacks India evacuates eastern coast as very severe Cyclone Arnab nears landfall Jordan strikes southern Syria after church attack, Damascus protests Anthropic's IPO filing shows heavy losses and warns of existential risks Russian strikes damage Kyiv's South Bridge and cut power in seven regions Flávio Bolsonaro leaves for US as Brazil cancels his passports Oil holds near $115 while gas, fuel costs and inflation stay high China's AI stocks keep falling despite state support French student groups reject concessions as finance minister rules out new spending AI stocks rebound as Meta raises equity and Anthropic files for IPO Hebron displacement nears 5,000 as officers expect pullout after vote Two men charged over RAF Fairford incident Student List wins Serbian election as Croatia demands acknowledgement of 1990s wars Indonesia and Singapore plan haze task force amid tensions Brazil's real suffers worst day in over 25 years after Lula comeback Iran threatens legal action against Sinokor ships over Hormuz UN commission says Israel continued genocide in Gaza after ceasefire Gas exporters meet in Moscow as Iranian and Qatari leaders hold talks Indonesian bond yield hits four-year high as MSCI risk and oil weigh French consumer confidence hits 13-year low amid protests

Symbolic image: OpenAI nears $500bn data-centre deal with $250bn Nvidia backstop

Symbolic image

OpenAI nears $500bn data-centre deal with $250bn Nvidia backstop

4 sources

OpenAI is close to finalising a data-centre project worth roughly $500 billion, with Nvidia in talks to provide about $250 billion in financial guarantees, according to the New York Times. Neither company has confirmed the terms. The reports land as the cost of financing such projects rises and as Nvidia also stands behind a separate $50 billion data-centre lease in Texas.

What happened

The New York Times reports that OpenAI is close to landing a data centre worth about $500 billion and that Nvidia is in talks to provide a $250 billion financial backstop for it, which would rank among the largest arrangements of the AI boom. According to the same New York Times report, the guarantees would let OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt site being built at Piketon, Ohio, by SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary, with the US Department of Energy also part of the arrangement. Neither OpenAI nor Nvidia has confirmed the figures or the structure, so the terms remain unconfirmed. Separately, the Financial Times reports that Nvidia stands behind a $50 billion lease on a Texas data centre that will run on its own chips, a report Reuters relayed on the same day. The Wall Street Journal, examining the terms Meta accepted on its latest financing, writes that the price of funding the data-centre build-out is rising.

What could happen next

What is new is the scale and the direction of the money: Nvidia, the supplier of the chips, is increasingly underwriting the customers and the buildings that will house them, in Ohio through guarantees and in Texas through a lease. The rising financing costs described by the Wall Street Journal set that against a market that has begun to question the spending, with Apple moving back ahead of Nvidia as the world's most valuable public company, a shift the New York Times links to investor concern over AI costs. The next markers are whether OpenAI and Nvidia confirm the arrangement and disclose its terms, and how the guarantees are recorded in Nvidia's own accounts. The role of the Department of Energy in the Ohio site remains unspecified in the reporting so far.