OpenAI is set to lease a huge artificial intelligence data center in Ohio for 20 years under a deal backed by a $105 billion financing commitment from Nvidia, according to a regulatory filing published Monday.
The facility will be built on the site of a former Cold War-era uranium enrichment plant and is planned to begin with 4.25 gigawatts of capacity. It could eventually expand by another 3.75 gigawatts, reaching 8 GW and potentially becoming the world’s largest single AI data center.
The facility will run exclusively on Nvidia chips.
SoftBank and SB Energy, the site’s owner, will invest more than $4 billion in local energy infrastructure and build at least 10 GW of new power generation to supply the project. OpenAI will also provide $40 million to support local priorities.
Nvidia will separately invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy.
The company defended the arrangement against concerns over so-called circular financing, in which AI companies receive financial backing from the same suppliers that benefit from their infrastructure spending.
“OpenAI will pay the lease,” Nvidia said in a blog post, arguing that the financing follows the same discipline it uses in managing its supply chain.
The $105 billion commitment is Nvidia’s largest financing guarantee and highlights the enormous sums required to build AI infrastructure. Despite rapid revenue growth, major AI companies continue to rely heavily on funding from technology suppliers to expand computing capacity.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the Ohio project as a major expansion of the company’s computing infrastructure, saying it would provide enough capacity to support millions of people using AI.
OpenAI expects the project to generate around 35,000 temporary construction jobs over six years and 2,500 permanent operating jobs.
The job and energy commitments come as communities across the United States increasingly push back against large data centers, which consume substantial amounts of electricity and water.
A March Gallup poll found that more than 70 percent of Americans oppose having data centers built near their homes.
Rising electricity costs linked partly to the expansion of data centers have also become a political issue ahead of the US midterm elections.
OpenAI and SB Energy said they would cover the project’s energy and infrastructure costs without passing them on to local residents.
The scale of the planned facility is substantial. A nuclear power plant typically generates around 1 GW, while San Francisco consumed slightly more than 5 GW of electricity in 2024.
The project adds to a broader AI infrastructure race. Last year, OpenAI, Nvidia, SoftBank and other partners including Oracle announced Stargate, a multiyear $500 billion data center initiative targeting 10 GW of capacity across multiple locations, with half of that capacity planned for the UAE.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has about 1 GW of capacity at its Colossus data centers in Tennessee and Mississippi, while Meta is developing a 5 GW data center project in Louisiana.
