Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, left, speaks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the San Francisco AI Summit, Friday (local time). Yonhap

Nvidia is in talks to provide a roughly $250 billion backstop for OpenAI as part of a massive data center project, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The guarantees from Nvidia would help the ChatGPT maker lease a 10-gigawatt project that SoftBank’s energy subsidiary is developing in southern Ohio, the newspaper said citing people familiar with the matter.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.