Sam Altman's OpenAI Targets $500B Ohio AI Data Center Development

• OpenAI is in talks to lease the entirety of SB Energy's 10-gigawatt AI data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, built on U.S. Department of Energy land
• Nvidia is backstopping the deal with credit guarantees covering both OpenAI's 20-year lease and SB Energy's project financing
• Phase 1 targets 800 megawatts of capacity online by 2028; the full build-out approaches $500 billion
• The site is the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which produced enriched uranium for the U.S. government for nearly five decades

OpenAI Eyes the Entire Campus at Ohio's Former Nuclear Site

OpenAI is negotiating to lease a planned 10-gigawatt AI data center campus on federal land in Pike County, Ohio, a deal first reported by The Information that would make it the largest AI infrastructure commitment in history.

The campus is being developed by SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary, on the grounds of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Scioto Township, a 1950s uranium enrichment facility south of Piketon that the U.S. government operated for nearly half a century. SB Energy and the Department of Energy announced the joint development plan in March 2026 and broke ground shortly after.

Under the terms being discussed, OpenAI would lease the entire campus under a 20-year agreement, taking control of all equipment at the site. Rent payments kick in once operations begin. Total rent over the life of the deal is expected to reach tens of billions of dollars.

NVIDIA is the Backstop

The structure of the deal puts Nvidia in an unusual position: chipmaker-as-guarantor. NVIDIA has reportedly agreed to use its balance sheet to backstop OpenAI's lease payments and SB Energy's project financing, two of the biggest financial risks in the transaction. NVIDIA is also expected to supply the hardware inside the campus.

It is a bet that positions all three companies at the center of U.S. AI infrastructure development, with OpenAI as the anchor tenant, SoftBank as the developer, and Nvidia as both vendor and financial guarantor.

The Numbers Behind the Campus

SB Energy is investing more than $33 billion to build 9.2 gigawatts of new natural gas generation directly on the site to power the campus, with the U.S. government ultimately taking ownership of the power plant. The company is also committing $4.2 billion in new transmission infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio and a $40 million community benefits agreement for surrounding Pike County communities.

Phase 1 of the campus, 800 megawatts of compute capacity, is scheduled to come online in 2028. The full buildout reaches 10 gigawatts and approaches a $500 billion total price tag, which would exceed the combined annual capital expenditure plans of the three largest U.S. cloud providers.

In January 2026, OpenAI and SoftBank each invested $500 million into SB Energy, committing a combined $1 billion to the venture before the lease talks were reported.

Federal Land, Federal Ambition

The Pike County site was one of 16 DOE properties identified last year as candidates for data center development under a policy supported by both the Biden and Trump administrations. Both presidents signed executive orders designed to accelerate data center construction on federal land. The Trump administration has branded the broader push its "Genesis mission" for national AI infrastructure.

The Portsmouth site stood out for its scale and existing power infrastructure. The DOE later named four sites: the Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge in Tennessee, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, as locations seeking formal bids for data center development. Portsmouth is moving on a separate track through the SB Energy partnership.

Where It Fits in the Stargate Picture

OpenAI's Stargate initiative, backed by SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, has already committed to roughly 7 gigawatts of planned capacity across multiple U.S. sites, including its flagship campus in Abilene, Texas (1.2 GW, approximately 4 million square feet). The Ohio lease would effectively double that footprint if completed at full scale.

Phase 1 comes online in 2028. If the lease is finalized, the full campus would ultimately make Portsmouth, Ohio, home to the largest concentration of AI computing infrastructure in the world.