PORTS-Pike illustrates AI’s transformation from a primarily digital industry into a massive physical infrastructure undertaking requiring the same combination of energy, labor, capital and industrial capacity that powered earlier American economic revolutions. (Source: Image by RR)

OpenAI, NVIDIA and SB Energy Partner on Massive Ohio Data Center Campus

OpenAI has agreed to secure approximately 8 gigawatts of IT capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, joining SB Energy, NVIDIA and the U.S. Department of Energy in one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure developments announced to date. The campus, as noted in an article at openai.com, will be developed partly on remediated federal land at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, transforming a site once central to American industrial and national-security infrastructure into a massive computing hub. The first 800 megawatts are expected to become available in 2028, with additional capacity requiring new transmission infrastructure and power generation, including natural gas.

The six-year buildout is expected to create approximately 35,000 construction jobs through 2032 and another 2,500 permanent operating positions. OpenAI says it will contribute $40 million to a locally directed community fund, matching an earlier $40 million commitment from SB Energy, while also making up to $84 million in Codex credits available to roughly 844,000 eligible Ohio college, community-college and technical-school students. The companies also plan to work with organized labor, apprenticeship programs, educational institutions and local suppliers to build a regional workforce around construction, technical operations and advanced infrastructure.

The project is also designed to address growing public concerns surrounding enormous AI data centers. SB Energy says it will pay for required grid upgrades and transmission infrastructure rather than shifting those costs to regional ratepayers, while the campus plans to use closed-loop, air-cooled systems intended to substantially reduce ongoing water consumption. OpenAI has committed to publishing annual reports covering energy use, water consumption, community investment and local hiring, while development will proceed only as infrastructure, financing, environmental reviews and permits become available.

SB Energy will own and operate the facilities under a 20-year lease to OpenAI, while the campus will exclusively house NVIDIA AI computing infrastructure. NVIDIA will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy and provide credit support for portions of the initial development. OpenAI says the enormous capacity is necessary to support frontier-model training and increasing demand for products such as ChatGPT and Codex. More broadly, PORTS-Pike demonstrates how the AI competition is rapidly expanding beyond models and software into an industrial race involving land, power generation, transmission, chips, construction, cooling systems and entire regional economies.

read more at openai.com