SAN FRANCISCO — In a major expansion of physical infrastructure for artificial intelligence, ChatGPT creator OpenAI has agreed to lease a massive new data centre facility in Ohio for 20 years, supported by a $105 billion financing guarantee from semiconductor giant Nvidia.
According to regulatory filings released Monday, the megaproject will be constructed on the repurposed grounds of a former Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant. Designed to run exclusively on Nvidia’s advanced processors, the facility holds an initial target capacity of 4.25 gigawatts (GW), with plans to scale up to 8 GW. If completed to full capacity, it will stand as the single largest artificial intelligence computing site globally. To put that power demand into context, an average nuclear power plant generates roughly 1 GW, while the entire city of San Francisco consumed just over 5 GW of power in 2024.
The project is being developed alongside SoftBank and its clean energy subsidiary, SB Energy. The entities plan to inject over $4 billion into regional energy infrastructure, building at least 10 GW of new renewable power generation to supply the facility. OpenAI has also pledged $40 million toward local community development and priorities.
Nvidia will directly invest $1.5 billion into SB Energy alongside providing its record-breaking $105 billion backstop. In a company blog post, Nvidia pushed back against criticisms regarding potential circular financing in the tech sector, clarifying that OpenAI will independently pay the lease and that the arrangement adheres to strict supply-chain management discipline.
"This is going to be a huge site, with enough computing power to help millions of people use AI to do things we can only start to imagine today," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a statement.
OpenAI expects the development to generate roughly 35,000 temporary construction jobs over a six-year buildout, followed by 2,500 permanent operational positions. The explicit promises of job creation and self-funded power grid investments come as tech companies face mounting public skepticism and pushback over the massive electrical and water consumption required by modern AI facilities.
The Ohio lease follows the consortium's broader $500 billion "Stargate" initiative announced last year alongside SoftBank and Oracle, which aims to deploy 10 GW of AI computing infrastructure across multiple global locations. The move also signals a continuing arms race among tech giants building giga-scale data hubs, including Meta's planned 5 GW campus in Louisiana and Elon Musk's 1 GW Colossus facility serving SpaceXAI across the American South.
