SoftBank eyes up to $40b Ohio AI data center project

SoftBank Group Corp. is working to build a 10 GW AI data center at the DOE Portsmouth site in Piketon, Ohio, to be powered by roughly US$33 billion worth of natural‑gas‑fired electricity, with the data center and equipment costing US$30–40 billion.

Portsmouth is a 3,700‑acre former uranium enrichment complex about 70 miles south of Columbus.

Rich Hossfeld, co‑chief executive officer of SoftBank‑backed SB Energy, said turbines have been sourced, with the first expected to be delivered within a year and the rest by decade‑end, totaling 9.2 GW installed across the region.

SB Energy plans another 800 MW for the site and is working with American Electric Power Co.’s local utility to invest US$4.2 billion in upgrading and building transmission to support the load.

Officials, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, were scheduled to speak in Ohio alongside SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son about the project, which is tied to a US-Japan US$550 billion investment pact, and customers have not been disclosed.

Industry experts and critics have expressed skepticism about the scale and potential pressures on water and power as data center capacity expands.

🔗 Source: Bloomberg

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Regulatory and competitive hurdles remain

The effort links to OpenAI’s “Stargate” initiative. SoftBank invests in OpenAI, and SB Energy partnered with OpenAI on the AI firm’s 1.2GW Stargate data center in Milam County, Texas 1.
The plan sits within a U.S.-Japan strategic trade and investment agreement. Trump administration officials expect it to steer Japanese capital into American infrastructure projects, alongside tariff provisions 2.
Local opposition is growing. A petition seeks a statewide constitutional amendment that would ban new data centers larger than 25 megawatts 3.
PJM Interconnection (PJM), the regional nonprofit that coordinates the power grid and wholesale electricity market across parts of the eastern U.S., learned of the proposed 9.2GW generation project only after the Trump administration announced it. Adding that much generation could take years under PJM’s standard interconnection queue process 2.

AI power demand is splitting infrastructure

The buildout adds to a move where tech companies develop their own power generation and pay for grid upgrades near electricity-heavy data center campuses 4.
SB Energy has focused on solar and battery storage development. The Ohio buildout is expected to add up to 10GW of new generation, including 9.2GW of natural gas generation, to support a 10GW data center campus. The plan underlines how data center reliability needs are driving new gas plants 1.
The approach matches Trump administration policies that push data center operators to cover their own infrastructure costs. The goal is to avoid shifting expenses to residential electricity customers 1.
Over time, the pattern could produce a two-tier system. Only the largest AI and cloud computing companies may afford private energy-and-compute campuses, which could shape who competes on frontier AI.