Nvidia has signed leases worth up to $50bn for a massive Texas data centre, a previously undisclosed commitment that shines a new spotlight on the chip group’s growing role in financing AI. The nearly $5tn company is leasing the entire 1 gigawatt facility that developer Hut 8 is building, which will house hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s graphics processing units, said five people familiar with the deal. The move is the latest example of Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang aggressively using the company’s financial strength to keep it at the centre of the fast‑growing market for AI computing power.

These efforts have included spending billions of dollars to foster a new generation of AI infrastructure providers, such as Core Weave, to buy and run its GPUs. The Texas lease goes further, putting Nvidia behind the facilities that will house its chips. The Texas site has secured access to electricity, something that is increasingly rare as developers compete for grid power.

Nvidia wielded its financial muscle to lock in the site for its own chips, said an executive familiar with the deal. Once completed, Nvidia could sublease capacity to its “neocloud” partners that buy its GPUs and sell AI cloud computing. Nvidia is also in talks to provide a $250bn backstop to OpenAI to help it lease a 10 GW data centre Soft Bank is building in Ohio, according to people familiar with the move.

The chipmaker’s 15‑year lease commitment for the Texas site is worth $19.6bn, and renewal options would take the total value to $50bn over 30 years, according to Hut 8. These leases are central to Hut 8’s ability to cheaply finance the project, with about $4.3bn in bonds issued at 6.129 per cent in June. The bond drew an investment‑grade rating from Moody’s because of the lease and were priced roughly 100 basis points above the chip group’s own 30‑year debt.