Key Points
- OpenAI may lease a 10‑GW Ohio data‑center campus backed by Nvidia.
- The site could cost **$500 billion** to build and start operating in **2028**.
What is changing
OpenAI is in advanced talks to sign a 20‑year lease for a proposed 10‑gigawatt data‑center campus in southern Ohio. Under the deal, OpenAI would control the servers while Nvidia would provide the hardware and act as a financial guarantor for the lease and the project’s financing. The first phase of the campus is expected to be live in 2028, with the overall build costing at least $500 billion.
The Ohio site matches a Department of Energy plan to redevelop the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The plan includes building 10 GW of new power, at least 9.2 GW of it from natural‑gas generators, and extensive transmission upgrades. If the lease goes through, OpenAI will operate the compute infrastructure on that power supply, extending a partnership that began in September 2025 when Nvidia pledged up to $100 billion for each gigawatt it powers.
Why it matters
Enterprise IT leaders, especially CIOs and system architects, need to watch this because the deal ties AI model access to a single, massive hardware and power ecosystem. Infrastructure flexibility becomes a negotiating point; companies may want to ensure OpenAI can also run on other clouds like AWS or Google Cloud rather than being locked to Nvidia‑only capacity.
The practical takeaway is to include clauses that protect against over‑dependence on one compute provider and to plan for the long rollout timeline—full capacity may take a decade to materialize, bringing financing and execution risks. Assess any minimum usage commitments or reservation tiers that could affect budgeting.
Share your thoughts on how such mega‑scale AI infrastructure deals could impact your organization’s cloud strategy in the comments.