Nvidia is pushing beyond chips and into the power layer of AI infrastructure. The company plans to invest as much as $3 billion in Lancium, a Blackstone-backed power infrastructure developer, to secure gigawatts of electricity for data center projects tied to its chip customers, according to an Aug. 7 report from The Information.
The report said Nvidia has agreed to invest an initial $2 billion in Lancium and could add another $1 billion once the developer reaches additional power interconnection milestones. The first $2 billion would give Nvidia roughly a 20% stake. If the follow-on investment is completed, that stake would rise to about 30%.
The transaction values Lancium at about $10 billion on an enterprise-value basis, including debt.
A staged equity deal tied to power milestones
People familiar with the matter told The Information that the deal is structured in two steps. Nvidia would first acquire about 20% of Lancium through the $2 billion investment. The remaining $1 billion would be released only after specific thresholds are met at Lancium’s campuses, including grid interconnection conditions, lifting Nvidia’s ownership to about 30%.
The report said the investment is a straight equity deal and does not include credit guarantees for data center construction or leasing. It added that Nvidia is weighing credit support for other projects, including a 10-gigawatt Ohio data center project involving OpenAI and SoftBank.
Power has become the bottleneck
The strategic aim is clear: electricity has become one of the central constraints on AI data center buildouts. Lancium is the power infrastructure provider behind OpenAI and Oracle’s “Stargate” AI campus in Abilene, Texas. It has already secured and developed 4 gigawatts of electricity on the Texas grid, with another 15 gigawatts of projects in the pipeline awaiting interconnection.
For Nvidia, a stake in Lancium would amount to early access to scarce power capacity for a large base of chip customers building data centers.
The Lancium deal is also the latest move in a wider investment push. The Information reported that in the quarter ended in April this year, Nvidia invested $18.6 billion across private companies and infrastructure funds, more than its total investment volume for the entire previous year.
Since the start of this year, Nvidia has also written separate $2 billion checks to cloud providers CoreWeave and Nebius. It has also invested in networking equipment companies Lumentum and Coherent, as well as semiconductor company Marvell. Taken together, those moves point to Nvidia taking a larger role as an investor across the AI infrastructure stack, rather than operating only as a chip supplier.
Lancium’s Texas footprint
According to the report, Lancium’s contracted 4 gigawatts of power cover several major projects:
- 1.2 gigawatts for the OpenAI and Oracle campus in Abilene, the core compute node of the Stargate plan;
- 900 megawatts for a new Microsoft data center in Abilene being built by partner Crusoe;
- 1 gigawatt recently signed by QTS Data Centers in Turkey, Texas;
- another 1 gigawatt project under development by Crusoe in Childress.
Outside those secured assets, Lancium has assembled land in Texas that could support another 15 gigawatts of power. Those sites are still waiting for grid interconnection approvals. The company is also laying the groundwork to develop additional power-linked land before 2035 and could benefit from a proposed extra-high-voltage transmission network in Texas, the report said.
Texas policy shift adds uncertainty
A possible complication emerged around the time news of the transaction surfaced. Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday ordered a pause on new grid interconnection applications for data centers and called for further review of those projects, according to the report.
That policy move introduces uncertainty into Lancium’s expansion timeline. Even so, people familiar with the matter said Lancium’s 15 gigawatts of pending projects are in a relatively favorable position because its partner utility, American Electric Power, has already completed the line studies needed to supply those campuses. That gives the projects a head start in the approval process.
Lancium is also considering a 2027 IPO
The financing could also support Lancium’s capital-markets plans. The Information said two people familiar with the matter indicated that Lancium is considering an IPO in 2027. If it proceeds, the company would follow data center and infrastructure developers such as Switch and CyrusOne into the public markets.
Nvidia’s investment would provide additional capital for expansion and could also strengthen Lancium’s standing ahead of a potential listing.