PORTS-Pike Technology Campus (SB Energy / OpenAI)

Capacity: announced vs energized

Announced-to-energized gap: 10 GW. Every figure below is a single dated, sourced claim. Current best per series resolves by evidence tier, then date. See the methodology.

Promised online: Q1 2028. 17 months away. Claimed by SB Energy / SoftBank / OpenAI (source).

Construction evidence

Dated satellite imagery of the site itself, oldest to newest, with the campus milestones that landed in each window. This is what the site looked like from orbit while announcements, permits, and energizations were dated into our ledger, so bare land, grading, and building mass tell their own story alongside the paper trail. Sentinel-2 true color, 10 m resolution, cloud-free scenes; click any frame to expand it.

Delivery paceAnnounced Q3 2026 · live Q3 2026 · 0 mo build

• 2026-08announced: 10 GW
• 2026-08contracted: 4.25 GW
• 2026-08energized: 0 GW
• 2026-08Nvidia lease + power-payment guarantee to SB Energy · $105B
• +3 more

Dated Sentinel-2 imagery, gated to hand-verified site coordinates. Milestones synthesized from the campus's own capacity ledger, financial claims, and lifecycle events; each chip links to its source. How we source and verify it: satellite construction evidence.

Key facts

Reported facts

Structured facts sourced from citations already on this record. Each fact traces to a source in the References section below.

Developer / operator

SB Energy builds, owns and operates under a 20-year OpenAI lease

Capacity (company-claimed)

8 IT-GW total: initial 4.25 IT-GW plus NVIDIA option on 3.75

Compute

NVIDIA exclusive; DSX AI factory platform

Site

PORTS-Pike campus at the former Portsmouth plant, Pike County, Ohio

Phasing (targeted)

Online in phases from 2028

NVIDIA investment (company-claimed)

$1.5B in SB Energy plus credit support

Community (company-claimed)

$4.2B+ AEP Ohio grid investment; $80M community fund

PJM study agreement (utility filing, Oct 2026)

PJM filed ER27-126 at FERC on Oct 13 2026: initial 800 MW under AEP Ohio's tariff plus about 9,570 MW more load (about 10.37 GW) and 10,170 MW gross new gas generation.

Grid build and phasing (utility filing)

AEP Ohio plans three 765 kV lines and related infrastructure for the campus; the expansion is phased through 2032 and studied as one integrated project.

Full build-out (government-stated, Oct 2026)

Pike County says the campus could include 18 data center buildings at full scale, with an estimated 35,000 construction jobs and about 2,500 permanent jobs.

Gas generation ownership (government-stated)

The 9.2 GW of new gas generation, about $33B, is funded in part under the U.S.-Japan trade and investment deal and is to be owned by the U.S. Government.

County agreement (government-stated, Oct 2026)

Pike County commissioners are reviewing a proposed SB Energy agreement that includes payments in lieu of taxes. No final county agreement has been signed.

On the data center map

Every tracked data center is on this map, centered on PORTS-Pike Technology Campus. Pan or zoom out to see how close rivals are building.

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The deal

developer

SB Energy · SoftBank Group subsidiary; builds and operates the campus.

grid operator

PJM Interconnection · The campus sits in PJM territory (subject to FERC's June 2026 large-load interconnection show-cause order).

chip supplier

NVIDIA · Exclusive AI-compute provider to the site.

investor

NVIDIA · $1.5B equity in SB Energy.

tenant

OpenAI · 20-year anchor lease.

guarantor

NVIDIA · Up to $105B conditional guarantee of OpenAI's lease + power-payment obligations.

Power

Power source

behind the meter gas

Grid operator

PJM

Interconnection

Generation and grid built together: the campus is paired with up to 10 GW of new generation, of which 9.2 GW is gas, alongside $4.2 billion of new transmission built in partnership with AEP Ohio. The developer has committed to funding that transmission rather than passing it to ratepayers, and treats generation, transmission and compute as one coordinated build.

Water

Closed loop, no make-up water claimed. The cooling system recirculates rather than running evaporative towers, so after the initial fill the developer expects ongoing use comparable to an office building of similar headcount: sinks, restrooms, washdown and landscaping. That would be far below what the former gaseous diffusion plant on the site consumed.

PORTS-Pike gas-fired generation, 9.20 GW gas, Announced. 9.2 GW of new gas-fired power envisioned to power the campus; unbuilt. U.S. officials say Japan would fund it under a 2025 trade and investment deal.

The PJM grid demand right now: 90.8 GW (EIA-930, 2026-11-11 19:00). PORTS-Pike Technology Campus's announced 10 GW would be 11.0% of the grid's current load.

County water status: No drought in Pike County, week of 2026-11-03 (US Drought Monitor). Data centers are large water users for cooling; this is the neutral local water picture.

Why here

PORTS-Pike Technology Campus sits on federal doe land in Ohio, Piketon. It connects to the PJM grid, draws on behind the meter gas power, interconnection is Generation and grid built together: the campus is paired with up to 10 GW of new generation, of which 9.2 GW is gas, alongside $4.2 billion of new transmission built in partnership with AEP Ohio. The developer has committed to funding that transmission rather than passing it to ratepayers, and treats generation, transmission and compute as one coordinated build.. This siting summary is composed from the record's held fields, not speculation; see methodology.

Financial structure

Nvidia lease + power-payment guarantee to SB Energy

up to $105B. Conditional; per an SEC filing; initially backs the first 4.25 GW; scaled down from an originally reported $250B (later cut below $120B) after investor concern over Nvidia's risk exposure. sec filing ↗

Nvidia investment in SB Energy

$1.5B. To back SB Energy's evolution into a leading AI infrastructure developer. press release ↗

SB Energy / SoftBank regional grid investment

$4.2B. At least $4.2B into regional grid infrastructure, alongside power sources supporting 10 GW. journalist report ↗

OpenAI 20-year lease

20-year lease; rent payable once operational; total rent expected to reach tens of billions of dollars. journalist report ↗

Regulatory paper trail

The filings and rules on record for this site and its jurisdiction, most recent first. Each is a sourced, dated artifact you can follow to the primary document.

Timeline

1. Show 15 earlier updates
2. Aug 2026
   party added
   grid_operator: PJM Interconnection
3. Nov 2026
   Current: Announced

Sources

• NVIDIA Guarantees SB Energy's PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio ↗ · NVIDIA
• Nvidia backing $105 billion in financing for OpenAI data center in Ohio ↗ · CNBC
• OpenAI announces massive Ohio data center with Nvidia guarantee ↗ · Axios
• SoftBank's 10 GW Ohio Campus Marks a Turning Point for AI Infrastructure ↗ · Data Center Frontier
• OpenAI joins PORTS-Pike project ↗ · OpenAI
• PJM Interconnection, Docket No. ER27-126-000: Study Agreement for Ohio State Agreement Approach Request ↗ · PJM Interconnection (FERC filing)
• PJM plans to study SoftBank's Ohio AI project under state agreement approach ↗ · Utility Dive
• SigForseti on the PJM Flagship filing ↗ · @SigForseti
• PORTS-Pike Technology Campus ↗ · Pike County Board of Commissioners
• FACT SHEET: The Department of Energy is Ensuring Affordable Energy Access in Ohio While Powering the Future of AI ↗ · U.S. Department of Energy
• PORTS-Pike project draws hundreds seeking information ↗ · Chillicothe Gazette
• Hundreds turned out to learn about PORTS-Pike in southern Ohio ↗ · Shawn Cutter on X

c6de1f86-d0f5-4aa2-b82c-448149f7a8d0 · Tracked with DEPLOY's verified-vs-claimed methodology. Every term is defined in the glossary. Announced numbers are claims, not built capacity.

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