Tech giant Nvidia announced that it has agreed to back hundreds of billions of dollars for a new data center that is being constructed in southern Ohio.
The facility, which will be called the “PORTS Technology Campus,” is being built in Piketon in Pike County, approximately an hour and a half to the east of Cincinnati, and roughly the same distance to the south of Columbus. The project was previously announced by the Department of Energy in conjunction with business leaders in March.
Once completed, the facility is expected to be leased to technology giant OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT — by SB Energy, which is overseeing the data center’s construction.
In turn, Nvidia is expected to be the main supplier of computer chips for the facility, committing up to $105 billion to the project.
As a result of the staggering amount of money, the investment could potentially make it the most expensive data center project ever built by the time it is expected to be fully completed in 2032, with some estimates putting total expenses required to get the facility up and running near $500 billion dollars.
In announcing the investment, <a href="https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/securing-the-infrastructure-of-intelligence/” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a blog post last week that the facility will help to power what he calls the emerging AI economy.
“AI factories are the defining infrastructure of the AI era — where compute transforms energy and data into intelligence that powers every business, industry and country,” said Huang. “In the AI economy, compute is revenue. AI factories require a full stack of critical resources: advanced chips, packaging, memory and networking — as well as land, power and shell. Just as Nvidia has used its scale, long-term visibility and supply-chain partnerships to secure critical semiconductor resources, we are now applying that same discipline to secure LPS capacity exclusively for Nvidia AI factories.”
OpenAI, which will be the primary company utilizing the facility once it is complete, says that the project will bring 35,000 construction jobs to the region over the next six years, with the company hoping it will continue to be ahern Ohio
“Pike County helped power America’s industrial growth in the 20th century and now, with this project, it has another opportunity to play a leading role in the next era of American industrialization,” wrote OpenAI. “We want it to be a catalyst for jobs, business growth, and investment across Southern Ohio—and to help make this a place where young people can build careers, raise families, and choose to stay.”
However, the project comes as resident backlash to the expansion of AI data centers has never been higher throughout Ohio. Opponents to data center construction point to evidence that some AI data center projects have raised electricity costs for surrounding homes and businesses in parts of the United States, while raising concerns over the massive amount of water typically needed to make the facilities operate. Despite this, OpenAI says that they and their business partners have accounted for both potential obstacles so as to not pose an undue burden on local communities in Pike County.
“SB Energy will pay the full cost of the grid upgrades and new transmission lines needed to serve the data center,” OpenAI continued. “Those costs will not be shifted to Ohio or other ratepayers in the region. This investment will also strengthen the regional electricity grid and support more reliable power over time.”
OpenAI also added that water will be continuously recycled throughout the plant, saying that the “data center will use closed-loop, air-cooled cooling systems that recirculate water rather than relying on cooling towers that continuously consume water for cooling. As a result, it will use significantly less water than historically used by the Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant.”
As a result of the backlash to the PORTS Technology Campus and other similar projects — with the Buckeye State ranking as the state with the seventh-most data centers across the United States — the issue has emerged as a top concern among voters in this year’s local Senate and gubernatorial races, with the winner of both races likely to have a massive amount of influence in setting future policy on data centers both within Ohio and across the United States as a whole.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and incumbent Senator Jon Husted have largely been supportive of the construction of data centers throughout Ohio, even as both have said that more regulation is needed to ensure that the facilities do not pose undue financial burdens on local communities.
Meanwhile, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and former Senator Sherrod Brown have voiced more skepticism on the construction of the facilities, with Acton in particular calling for a “conditional moratorium” on all new data center construction if elected.
Business leaders say that they hope to have the first phase of the PORTS Technology Campus come online by 2028, with a full rollout scheduled for 2032.
