NVIDIA Invests $3 Billion in Power Infrastructure Provider Lancium

NVIDIA has agreed to invest up to $3 billion in Lancium, a power infrastructure provider behind OpenAI's 'Stargate' AI campus. The chip giant will secure approximately 20% equity stake in Lancium with an initial $2 billion payment and increase it to around 30% after meeting specific milestones. This investment addresses the core bottleneck facing AI data centers: energy.

Lancium has already secured and is developing 4 gigawatts of power capacity on the Texas grid, with another 15 gigawatts of potential projects in progress. The company's assets include a 1.2-gigawatt power contract for OpenAI and Oracle's campus, as well as a 900-megawatt allocation to Crusoe's new data center in Abilene built for Microsoft.

The deal marks NVIDIA's latest move in its recent wave of large-scale investments, with the company investing a total of $18.6 billion in private companies and infrastructure funds during the quarter ended April this year. This investment constitutes a pure equity stake without credit guarantees for data center construction or leasing.