Company behind ChatGPT bringing world’s largest AI data center to Ohio

Earlier this month, OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, announced it plans to lease the massive new 8 gigawatt data center coming to Southern Ohio. 

Located in Piketon, Ohio, at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus (the site of a former Cold War uranium enrichment facility), the project will use Nvidia hardware infrastructure, with OpenAI signing onto a 20-year lease to use computing power at the new data center. Nvidia announced this week it plans to invest $1.5 billion into SB Energy, the owner of the space, which will also operate the data center once it’s built.

The project was originally announced this spring by U.S. Secretary of Energy Christ Wright, who noted that the amount of electrical power slated to be used by the site would make it the world’s largest AI data center.

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Phase 1 of construction on the project is scheduled to begin this year. Construction on the full campus will continue through 2032, but the center is slated to become operation in 2028 or 2029.

Massive data centers are nothing new to Ohioans, either. Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, is bringing what will be the world’s first gigawatt-capable center to New Albany.

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