OpenAI plans 8 GW AI data centre campus in Pike County, Ohio
OpenAI has entered an agreement to secure approximately 8 gigawatts of IT capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio. The project is being developed with SB Energy, NVIDIA and the US Department of Energy, and is expected to create 35,000 construction jobs during a six-year buildout through 2032, plus 2,500 long-term operating jobs.
SB Energy will build, own and operate the data centre under a 20-year lease to OpenAI. OpenAI will use capacity as it is completed, while the site will exclusively host NVIDIA AI compute infrastructure. NVIDIA plans to invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy and provide credit support for the land, power and shell buildout associated with the initial 4.25 IT-GW.
Phased power and infrastructure development
The first 800 megawatts are expected to become available in 2028, largely using existing AEP infrastructure. OpenAI said further development will require new power plants connected to the grid, including natural gas generation, as well as transmission lines and associated infrastructure. Progress remains dependent on infrastructure, permits, environmental reviews and financing.
SB Energy will pay the full cost of the grid upgrades and new transmission lines needed to serve the data centre, OpenAI said. The company stated that those costs would not be shifted to Ohio or other regional ratepayers. OpenAI will begin paying for capacity only as it becomes available for lease and says it will fund commitments through business revenue, cash flow and investor capital.
Water, jobs and community investment
The planned facility will use closed-loop, air-cooled cooling systems that recirculate water instead of cooling towers that continuously consume it. OpenAI said that, once the cooling system is filled, ongoing water use is expected to be comparable to an office building supporting a similar number of people. The project will use the Department of Energy's existing onsite water system and fund new local water infrastructure; expected water use will be reported once the site design is finalised.
The campus is being developed across private land and remediated land controlled by the Department of Energy at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. It extends OpenAI's pattern of regional AI infrastructure investment, including OpenAI regional AI infrastructure commitments as another example of capacity development tied to local economic commitments.
OpenAI will invest $40 million in a community grant fund, adding to SB Energy's previously announced $40 million commitment. The company will also make up to $84 million in Codex credits available to approximately 844,000 eligible Ohio college, community college and technical-school students aged 18 and over in the 2026–2027 academic year. Each eligible student can receive $100 in credits through a ChatGPT account.
Operating commitments and technical lessons
PORTS-Pike Campus has signed a memorandum of understanding with North America's Building Trades Unions. OpenAI and SB Energy say they will prioritise local workers, contractors, suppliers, trades and service providers, while working with schools, colleges, apprenticeship programmes, veterans' organisations, labour partners and workforce groups.
OpenAI and NVIDIA will collaborate on design, testing and commissioning, then publish a technical white paper on the project. It is intended to share lessons on resilient infrastructure design, component qualification and software-level workload management for improved compute availability, reliability and mean time between interruptions at cluster scale.
For businesses planning AI adoption, the project illustrates that large-scale compute availability depends on a coordinated pipeline of power, transmission, cooling, construction, permitting and skilled labour, not hardware procurement alone.