NVIDIA Partners With SB Energy to Host Exclusive AI Compute in Ohio

NVIDIA has entered a strategic partnership with SB Energy to secure land, power, and shell infrastructure at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Portsmouth, Ohio, establishing a dedicated site for next-generation artificial intelligence compute. OpenAI will operate as the primary tenant within this facility, which is engineered to function as a long-term AI factory. Under the arrangement, SB Energy will develop, own, and operate the campus under a 20-year lease, with phased deployment scheduled between 2028 and 2030. NVIDIA has committed to a 4.25-gigawatt initial capacity, retaining options to secure an additional 3.75 gigawatts on the site. The facility will utilize NVIDIA’s full-stack DSX AI factory platform, integrating GPUs, CPUs, networking, and infrastructure software to maximize operational efficiency and enable continuous hardware iteration across multiple upgrade cycles. The agreement marks a structural shift in how frontier artificial intelligence infrastructure is financed and deployed. Historically, compute procurement has been managed directly by cloud service providers and large enterprises, but rapidly expanding AI laboratories frequently lack the long-term credit profiles needed to secure land, power, and physical facilities independently. To resolve this bottleneck, NVIDIA will back a defined portion of the lease and power payments, alongside a residual-value guarantee, ensuring the site remains dedicated exclusively to NVIDIA compute hardware. The company also announced a $1.5 billion equity investment in SB Energy, aligning financial interests with SoftBank Group and OpenAI. This risk-managed structure allows NVIDIA to guarantee long-term productive capacity while preserving standard corporate financial parameters. OpenAI has committed to deploying approximately 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA compute through 2030, with potential expansion to 16 gigawatts if the Ohio site scales further. Industry projections estimate the broader compute opportunity could reach $600 billion by the end of the decade. NVIDIA executives emphasized that the PORTS-Pike campus is designed for perpetual hardware renewal, allowing each successive generation of systems to deliver greater computational throughput and improved economics without requiring new physical construction. Should OpenAI vacate the site in the future, NVIDIA’s standardized hardware architecture and CUDA software ecosystem would enable rapid redeployment to other qualified tenants across its global enterprise and cloud network. Beyond its technological implications, the PORTS-Pike development represents a major regional revitalization initiative. Situated on the grounds of a decommissioned government facility, the campus is being constructed in collaboration with AEP Ohio, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. SB Energy and SoftBank plan to construct at least 10 gigawatts of new energy generation, alongside $4.2 billion in regional grid infrastructure upgrades to protect local ratepayers. OpenAI has committed to contributing $80 million in total through a community benefits fund aimed at workforce development, affordable energy initiatives, and local economic growth. Executives from all partnering organizations highlighted the project’s capacity to generate tens of thousands of high-skilled jobs and reposition Southern Ohio as a central hub for American industrial innovation and artificial intelligence advancement.