OpenAI data center deal with Nvidia comes in $145 billion lower than reported—signaling concerns of artificial demand for chips

What came first—the chicken or the egg? Or in AI’s case, the investment or the revenue? Nvidia is guaranteeing up to $105 billion for OpenAI’s planned data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, coming in lower than the roughly $250 billion guarantee it was considering, according to reporting by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

The deal moved through at least two known checkpoints before landing at its final size: the Journal reported August 14 that Nvidia had already cut the guarantee to “less than $120 billion,” before the companies settled on $105 billion when the partnership was signed Monday.

Nvidia disclosed the final figure—an “aggregate payment obligation” capped at $105 billion—in an SEC filing tied to the announcement.

The partnership deal was signed yesterday.

The reduction represents a recurring concern among AI investors—the circular cycle of money in the AI ecosystem.

Nvidia and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment from Fortune.

The Ohio data center is a test of whether the AI boom can generate enough outside revenue to justify the spending being financed from within the AI industry.

There is already evidence of market concern from the deal.

When reports surfaced in July that Nvidia could guarantee as much as $250 billion, the company’s shares fell about 4.5% intraday from investor reaction to concerns of circular financing.

Reuters also noted anxiety about the sustainability of AI investment remains despite record market performance, with investors increasingly focused on enormous capital expenditures, rising debt and uncertainty over when that spending will generate returns.

Nvidia’s funding is designed to help SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed company developing the campus, secure financing by supporting certain lease and power payments and guaranteeing the value of parts of the completed infrastructure if OpenAI were to default.

The structure of the deal substantially reduces Nvidia’s financial exposure to risk.

The rollback comes as Nvidia faces growing questions about a financing model in which the world’s dominant AI-chip maker is increasingly helping finance the infrastructure that ultimately creates the demand for its own chips.

The self-funding cycle has been ongoing for years—Nvidia has invested in AI companies and data center operators that purchase its hardware, while also developing financing arrangements intended to make it easier for those customers to acquire more computing capacity.