Hours after Nuevo León’s Governor Samuel García announced that Nvidia had plans to invest US $1 billion to build a data center in the state, the U.S. chip company publicly denied those plans.

“Nvidia does not have financial investment plans in Nuevo Leon,” the company said in a statement to Reuters. “The company’s support for digital transformation and technological progress in Latin America is based exclusively on cooperation initiatives, research and talent development.”

García first announced Nvidia’s supposed investment during an Artificial Intelligence event dubbed Mexico IA+ Accelerated Investment, organized by the Ministry of Economy. The announcement was posted on García’s official X account, in which he appears alongside Nvidia executives.

“Nvidia, the leading software and Artificial Intelligence company, is coming to our state with a $1 billion investment,” García said in the video, as he explained that the investment would fund Mexico’s first Green Data Center for Artificial Intelligence.

The US $1 billion investment is happening, but not through Nvidia

Following Nvidia’s denial, the communication team of the Nuevo León government clarified García’s announcement. They confirmed that the US $1 billion investment will indeed come to Nuevo León, but will be done through Mexican AI company Cipre Holdings, a company that plans to build a green hydrogen data center in the state.

Representatives from Cipre Holding explained to newspaper El Economista that while the investment is certain, “Nvidia will not invest. It’s us, private companies, who will invest.”

“What Nvidia provides is technology and infrastructure that we decided to acquire in order to implement and develop their solutions for our companies, governments and all those who require this type of artificial intelligence infrastructure,” Jessica Peña, director of Mexico IA+ Accelerated Investment and representative of Cipre Holding said.

Although the data center will be located in Nuevo León, Peña explained it will provide services to users both in Mexico  and abroad.

While Nuevo León does frequently attract major tech and nearshoring investments, this is not the first major announcement by García that didn’t go as expected.

In March 2023, the Nuevo León governor announced that Tesla would invest more than US $4 billion to build a “giga-factory” in the municipality of Santa Catarina near Monterrey.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in October of that same year, that he was not ready to “go full tilt” on construction given global economic conditions. At the time, he said the first phase of construction would begin in early 2024.

However, the project is still on hold.

With reports from El País and El Economista