NVIDIA has secured exclusive land, power and shell (LPS) capacity at the PORTS‑Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, in a partnership with SB Energy to host large‑scale AI compute. The deal positions OpenAI as the anchor customer for an initial deployment designed to support 4.25 IT‑GW of AI factory capacity, with an option to take the remaining 3.75 IT‑GW to reach a total of 8 IT‑GW.
What the agreement includes
Under the arrangement, SB Energy will build, own and operate the data centre campus and enter into a 20‑year lease with OpenAI. NVIDIA has provided credit support to secure the necessary LPS buildout and committed to invest in SB Energy to back the development and community commitments.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Initial AI factory capacity | 4.25 IT‑GW |
| Option to extend | 3.75 IT‑GW (to reach 8 IT‑GW) |
| NVIDIA investment in SB Energy | $1.5 billion |
| Community benefits | Initial $80 million fund; project to invest hundreds of millions more |
The site will deploy NVIDIA’s DSX AI factory platform, a full‑stack architecture that combines GPUs, CPUs and networking with facilities and software. NVIDIA says the DSX approach is intended to provide resiliency across the entire stack and to streamline deployment and operations for large‑scale AI facilities.
“AI is becoming infrastructure – the foundation for intelligence in every industry – and land, power and shell have become vital in the age of AI. Now is the time to scale the AI infrastructure that will power the next industrial revolution.”
Economic and regional impact
Company statements say the PORTS‑Pike campus will create tens of thousands of Ohio jobs, fund its power infrastructure from project revenues and channel substantial capital into the surrounding community. The plan includes an initial community benefits fund of $80 million and promises further investments described as “hundreds of millions” to anchor local economic development.
- Anchor tenant: OpenAI will be the customer leasing the site capacity from SB Energy.
- Ownership and operations: SB Energy will build, own and operate the campus.
- NVIDIA role: exclusive AI compute provider for the site, credit support for LPS and platform technology via DSX.
The scale of the planned facility and the parties involved underline a broader shift in how AI compute is procured and sited. NVIDIA’s model ties hardware and software platform offerings to the physical infrastructure — land, power and shell — that are increasingly the bottleneck for rapid AI expansion.
What it means for AI infrastructure
Demand for AI compute has surged, pushing companies to secure long‑lead resources such as high‑capacity power and acreage suitable for dense data‑centre builds. By locking in LPS capacity and offering a complete stack solution, NVIDIA is betting that end‑to‑end control over infrastructure will shorten deployment timelines and reduce operational friction for customers like OpenAI.
For regional planners and policymakers, the deal raises familiar questions about the trade‑offs that accompany large data‑centre investments: local job creation and infrastructure funding versus increased power demand and land use changes. The firms involved frame the arrangement as mutually beneficial: the project reportedly will finance its own power infrastructure and supply a significant community fund while delivering computing capacity for the next generation of AI workloads.
As the facility moves from agreement to construction, the details that matter to nearby communities — timelines, grid upgrades, procurement of local labour and environmental permitting — will determine whether the promised economic gains materialize and how the new infrastructure integrates with regional development goals.
The PORTS‑Pike announcement marks another example of AI firms and their suppliers expanding beyond chips and software into real estate and power engineering to meet the scale required by modern large‑language models and other compute‑intensive services. The combination of an anchor AI customer, a platform supplier and a specialist infrastructure operator creates a template likely to be watched and perhaps replicated in other jurisdictions competing for AI investment.
