Nvidia is in talks to invest up to $3 billion in Lancium, the power-infrastructure developer behind the Stargate artificial-intelligence data-center campus in Texas, according to people familiar with the matter. The Information first reported the discussions, and Reuters confirmed the outline of the deal. An agreement has not been signed, and the terms could still change, the people said.
Under the terms under discussion, Nvidia would pay about $2 billion for a stake of roughly 20% in Lancium, which is backed by Blackstone. Up to $1 billion more would follow if Lancium meets certain targets, including new grid hookups, the people said. The investment would value Lancium and its portfolio of land and power connections at around $10 billion.
Lancium is the company behind the Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene, a 1,000-acre site that serves as the first operational location of Stargate, the joint venture of SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle announced in January 2025 with a pledge of up to $500 billion in infrastructure investment. The campus was designed around flexible computing load — facilities that can ramp power use up and down to absorb surplus wind and solar on the Texas grid, a design intended to turn electricity that would otherwise go to waste into a competitive advantage.
For Nvidia, the investment is a hedge on the most important input in the AI boom: electrons. Graphics processors are worthless without power, and data-center electricity has become the binding constraint on expansion. Grid interconnection queues in Texas and across the country run years long, and the scarce assets are no longer chips but land, substations and transmission access. Analysts said a stake in Lancium gives the chipmaker a seat at the table for the next round of capacity decisions, and a window into how its biggest customers will power the data centers that buy its processors.
The Abilene campus sits inside the ERCOT grid, the Texas market where renewable oversupply has periodically pushed prices to zero or below. Lancium’s flexible-load design was built to exploit those swings, drawing power when it is cheap and idling when it is not — a model that made the site attractive to Stargate precisely because it could absorb intermittent generation without waiting for new transmission. Nvidia’s interest in that model, analysts said, reflects a broader shift in how the industry thinks about power: not as a fixed cost, but as a tradable input whose value swings with the grid.
The deal would also bind Nvidia more tightly to Stargate. Nvidia is a chip supplier to OpenAI, and closer ties to the project’s power provider deepen a relationship that already spans products and capital. For Lancium and Blackstone, the money would arrive as Lancium explores an initial public offering in 2027, the people said. A strategic investor with Nvidia’s balance sheet would anchor the IPO story, and the capital is expected to help Lancium expand its operations ahead of a listing.
The talks extend a pattern that has defined the last two years of the AI buildout: companies at the top of the stack buying their way down into energy. Hyperscalers have signed power purchase agreements, backed nuclear startups and reserved capacity on gas plants. Nvidia has spent the past year striking energy deals of its own, including investments in nuclear and gas generation projects in the United States, part of a push to secure power for the data centers that run its chips. The Lancium talks go a step further, from generation to the grid itself — to the interconnection rights and land positions that have become the real estate of the AI economy.
Analysts said the deal’s structure is telling. The first $2 billion buys roughly a fifth of the company at a $10 billion enterprise value. The extra $1 billion is tied to grid hookups — progress that will only become more valuable as queues lengthen. “Whoever controls power controls the pace of the next expansion,” one analyst said. The terms, if completed, would make Nvidia the largest strategic investor in a power developer whose land sits next to some of the cheapest renewable energy in the country.
There are risks. The talks could fall apart, and big-technology investments in energy infrastructure have drawn scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers worried about concentration. Blackstone has its own plans for Lancium, and the two investors would need to share control. The valuation — $10 billion for a portfolio of land and power connections that has yet to show Stargate-scale revenue — leaves little room for error if the buildout slows. And the progress that unlocks the final $1 billion, new grid connections, depends on regulators and interconnection queues as much as on capital. Analysts said the structure is a way to pay for performance: Nvidia buys a seat now, and pays more only when Lancium delivers the scarce asset that makes the deal valuable.
Neither Nvidia nor Lancium responded to requests for comment. If completed, the deal would mark the clearest example yet of a chipmaker buying its way into the power business. In the AI economy of 2026, the GPU is only half the machine. The other half is the grid it plugs into.
