OpenAI secured up to 8 gigawatts of AI computing capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, under a 20-year lease with SB Energy. Nvidia became the exclusive infrastructure provider and backed the deal with up to $105 billion in residual value guarantees—essentially vouching for the buildings, not OpenAI's rent. The campus sits on the site of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a Cold War-era uranium enrichment facility that operated from 1954 to 2001.
SB Energy, majority-owned by SoftBank with investments from OpenAI and now Nvidia, will build, own, and operate the data center. SoftBank plans to construct at least 10 GW of new electricity generation, including 9.2 GW of natural gas, to power the campus. The first 800 megawatts are expected online by 2028, with full buildout by 2032. Nvidia will supply every GPU, CPU, and networking component through its DSX AI factory platform, designed for repeated hardware upgrades.
The circular financing question
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed claims that the company is funding its own chip sales via circular dealmaking: No. OpenAI will pay the lease. But the structure is complex: Nvidia invests $1.5 billion in SB Energy, guarantees up to $105 billion in residual value, and plans to sell hundreds of billions of dollars in chips to the project. The campus will create an estimated 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent positions.
This is one of the largest AI buildouts to date and comes outside of Stargate, the troubled Microsoft-OpenAI-UAE joint venture that has had a rocky 2026. Power has become the primary constraint on new AI compute, and OpenAI is locking in dedicated generation on federal land with private capital—none of which it owns outright.