World’s largest AI data to be built in Ohio this year

Just days after a group of rural Ohio residents filed a petition to put a constitutional ban on mega data centers on the statewide ballot, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his team visited Piketon, OH, to announce the world’s largest data center would be built on the site of a former uranium plant, a little over an hour south from Columbus.

The U.S. Department of Energy said the 10-gigawatt data center is part of the U.S.-Japan Strategic Trade and Investment Agreement announced by Trump last year. The initiative includes $33.3 billion in Japanese funding tied to a natural gas generation component, which means this particular data center will include 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas generation.

In a statement to AP News, Wright said the project would “add power generation, create jobs, and ensure the United States wins the AI race.”

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This site is a collaboration of the Japanese business SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle on Stargate, an artificial intelligence infrastructure initiative that aims at building out large-scale U.S. data center capacity to support AI.

Construction on the project is expected to begin this year. According to the Department of Energy, it will create thousands of jobs, “while supporting research in areas such as fusion energy, quantum computing and national security applications.” The DOE is claiming that the excess power capacity generated at the site would be fed back into the grid to help lower electricity costs in the region.

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