OpenAI Reportedly In Talks For $500B Data Center Campus On Federal Land
OpenAI is reportedly negotiating to lease a planned 10-gigawatt data center development on land owned by the U.S. Department of Energy in Ohio.
With the deal, reported by The Information, OpenAI would lease the entirety of a massive artificial intelligence campus being built by SoftBank-backed SB Energy in Pike County, Ohio. Chipmaker Nvidia would also play a key role in backing the deal.
The project would be among the largest data center clusters in the world, with a reported price tag approaching $500B.
Under the terms of the agreement reportedly being considered, OpenAI would have control of the equipment in the facility under a long-term lease and would be responsible for payments once the facility is operational. The first phase of the project, expected to provide 800 megawatts of capacity, is scheduled to come online in 2028.
Nvidia has reportedly agreed to backstop multiple elements of the transaction, providing guarantees for OpenAI’s lease and SB Energy’s project financing.
The project site in question was formerly known as the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Located in Scioto Township, the facilities on the site produced enriched uranium for the U.S. government for nearly five decades.
In March, SB Energy and the Department of Energy jointly announced a plan to develop a data center campus on the former nuclear site, and the SoftBank subsidiary broke ground on the property soon after. The firm is investing more than $33B to build 9.2 GW of new gas power generation on the site, with the U.S. government ultimately taking ownership of the power plant.
The Trump administration has aggressively promoted data center and energy development on federal land, expanding a policy first enacted by the Biden administration. Both presidents signed executive orders intended to spur the construction of data centers on federal property.
The Pike County tract was one of 16 federal properties identified by the DOE last year as potential development sites for data centers and supporting power generation that could receive expedited permitting for new energy infrastructure. The DOE later named four of those sites as locations where it would seek bids for data centers: the Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
