OpenAI is planting a massive flag in Pike County, Ohio, securing roughly 8 gigawatts of IT capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus alongside SB Energy, NVIDIA, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The scale here is hard to overstate. During a six-year buildout stretching to 2032, the project is expected to support 35,000 construction jobs, with another 2,500 permanent operating roles once the site is running.
There’s a deliberate effort to avoid the extractive reputation that often trails hyperscale data centers. SB Energy will foot the entire bill for grid upgrades and new transmission lines, meaning Ohio ratepayers won’t subsidize the power infrastructure. Cooling will rely on closed-loop, air-cooled systems that recirculate water rather than the cooling towers that guzzle it continuously. OpenAI claims ongoing water use will look more like an office building than the old Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant that once anchored the site — a useful comparison for locals who remember that facility’s footprint.
The community package is substantial: $40 million from OpenAI on top of SB Energy’s existing $40 million commitment, plus up to $84 million in Codex credits for roughly 844,000 Ohio college students — about $100 each. A memorandum of understanding with North America’s Building Trades Unions signals organized labor will be central to construction. Property tax revenue is expected to flow primarily into public schools.
The political timing is not accidental. Data center siting has become a flashpoint as grid constraints and water scarcity pit tech giants against local communities. OpenAI is trying to preempt that fight by writing the concessions into the announcement itself. Whether 8 gigawatts materializes smoothly is another question entirely — transmission buildout at that scale rarely moves on schedule — but the playbook here is a direct response to the backlash that has already hit projects in Virginia, Arizona, and elsewhere.
