AI Sector Daily Digest: July 27, 2026

In brief

1. Nvidia may guarantee $250 billion for an OpenAI data center

• Nvidia is in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees so OpenAI can lease a 10-gigawatt data-center project in southern Ohio, The Wall Street Journal reported and Reuters relayed. 1
• The project is expected to cost more than $500 billion in total; its first phase is planned for 2028 with about 800 megawatts of power. The guarantee would cover the lease and debt financing, not the Nvidia chips inside the facility. 1
• Reuters said it could not independently verify the report, which was based on people familiar with the talks. OpenAI, Nvidia, and the Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours. 1

2. Nvidia plans a $1 billion stake in South Korea's Naver

• Nvidia plans to buy $1 billion of newly issued Naver shares, a move that sent the South Korean internet and cloud company more than 10% higher in Monday trading. 2
• The investment is tied to an expansion of Naver's GAK data center in Sejong. The site is planned to use Nvidia's Vera Rubin and Blackwell platforms and reach 200 megawatts by 2028; Brookfield is expected to provide up to $9 billion in project financing. 2
• Naver and Nvidia described the project as part of a broader push for AI infrastructure serving sovereign-AI demand across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. This is an equity investment and regional build-out, separate from the reported Ohio financing talks. 2

3. The White House broadens its voluntary data-center power pledge

• President Trump expanded the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to include utilities, data-center developers, cooperatives, and state governments, alongside the large technology companies that signed the original version. 3
• The White House says more than 200 additional participants have joined and that the pledge covers about 80% of the power delivered to US homes and businesses, or 263 million people. Those figures are the administration's claims, not an independent audit. 3
• The pledge has no stated enforcement mechanism or penalties if electricity bills rise because of data-center demand. The Register reported that the White House and EPA had been asked what would happen if signatories failed to meet the commitment. 3

4. Encord and Zander Labs test brain-wave data for physical AI

• Data-tooling company Encord and German neuroscience startup Zander Labs are running a trial to build a dataset that pairs robot actions with measurements of human brain activity. 4
• The partners plan to feed that labeled data into robot models and test whether it improves performance; Zander says brain signals could also help systems decide when a task needs a more expensive, higher-compute model. 4
• The experiment has not shown that brain-wave inputs work yet. TechCrunch reports that the companies will decide whether to scale the approach only after measuring an improvement, and that producing this kind of physical-world data remains expensive. 4

5. Russia signs a law for "sovereign" and "national" AI models

• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law establishing a legal framework for large foundational AI models and opening government data to their developers for training, according to an RIA Novosti report republished by NAMPA. 5
• The law introduces two categories: a "sovereign" model must remain under the control of a Russian legal entity with infrastructure in Russia, while a "national" model may use foreign open-source components under domestic control, according to an English-language explainer of the legislation. 6
• The same explainer says the government can designate public-administration and sensitive-sector cases in which only sovereign or national models may be used. The law's practical reach will depend on later implementation rules. 6

What to watch next

Sources

• Reuters: Nvidia in talks with OpenAI to guarantee $250 billion financing for data center
• Reuters: South Korea's Naver jumps 10% on Nvidia's $1 billion investment plan
• The Register: Trump expands voluntary pledge to keep datacenter costs off household power bills
• TechCrunch: Are brain waves the next unlock for physical AI?
• NAMPA / RIA Novosti: Putin Signs Law on AI Regulation in Russia
• Nowosci.ai: Russia adopts law on "sovereign" artificial intelligence