OpenAI secures 8 IT-GW at Ohio PORTS-Pike campus with Nvidia and SB Energy

OpenAI has entered into an agreement to secure approximately 8 IT-gigawatts of capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, turning a former industrial and national-security site into one of the most closely watched AI infrastructure projects in the United States. The August 17 announcement says OpenAI will work with SB Energy, Nvidia and the U.S. Department of Energy on a campus designed to support frontier training and growing demand for products such as ChatGPT and Codex.

The company framed the project as both a compute expansion and a regional investment. OpenAI says the six-year buildout through 2032 is expected to create 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 long-term operating jobs. It also pledged a 40 million dollar community grant fund, adding to an earlier 40 million dollar commitment from SB Energy, and said it will provide 84 million dollars in Codex credits through ChatGPT for eligible Ohio college, community college and technical school students aged 18 and older during the 2026–2027 academic year.

Local impact is a central part of the announcement because large AI data centers increasingly face questions about power, water and who pays for new infrastructure. OpenAI says the project-specific energy and grid costs will be paid by the project rather than shifted to local ratepayers. It also says the data center will use closed-loop, air-cooled systems that recirculate water and should require far less ongoing water than the Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant once used. The company says expected water use will be reported after the design is finalized.

The commercial structure shows how AI infrastructure is becoming its own specialized supply chain. SB Energy will build, own and operate the data center under a 20-year lease to OpenAI, delivering capacity over time. The first 800 megawatts are expected to become available in 2028, largely using existing AEP infrastructure. Nvidia will be the exclusive compute provider at the site, will invest 1.5 billion dollars in SB Energy, and will provide credit support for the land, power and shell buildout tied to the initial 4.25 IT-gigawatts.

For OpenAI, the move pushes beyond renting generic cloud capacity and toward a more direct role in shaping the physical systems behind AI. Frontier models require chips, power, cooling, networking, maintenance, resilient software and enough redundancy to keep services reliable as usage grows. When companies discuss lower latency, larger context windows, more agentic workflows or broader consumer access, those product claims ultimately rest on the ability to bring huge clusters online and keep them running.

The announcement still carries execution risk. OpenAI says further development depends on permits, environmental reviews, financing and new power plants and transmission lines. Large gas-fired power plans can draw scrutiny from climate advocates and local residents, and the broader AI market is already debating whether infrastructure financing has become too circular among model developers, chipmakers and investors. OpenAI says it will begin paying only as completed capacity becomes available and will fund commitments through revenue, cash flow and investor capital.

The practical significance is that AI competition is now as much about infrastructure delivery as model releases. If PORTS-Pike comes online as planned, OpenAI gains a long-term path to more compute and Nvidia locks in a large future deployment for its AI factory platform. For users and enterprise customers, the effects would show up indirectly through model availability, reliability, pricing and the ability to run more demanding workflows. For Ohio, the test will be whether promised jobs, community funding, student access and grid upgrades materialize alongside the data center itself.