OpenAI Joins Ohio’s PORTS-Pike Campus as Nvidia Backs Massive AI Infrastructure Buildout

OpenAI has entered an agreement to secure approximately 8 gigawatts-IT at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio. The project brings together OpenAI, SB Energy, Nvidia and the U.S. Department of Energy around a large-scale data center development intended to expand AI computing capacity while supporting regional employment.

The commitment makes PORTS-Pike a central piece of OpenAI’s infrastructure expansion. OpenAI described the project as a community investment supporting thousands of Southern Ohio jobs, while Nvidia’s involvement connects the campus to the company’s chip and data center strategy. SB Energy, a SoftBank-linked developer, is leading the site development.

Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a transaction that gives the chipmaker a direct financial position in the developer behind the OpenAI-linked campus. Nvidia said the investment will support infrastructure at PORTS-Pike and guarantee its role as the site’s compute infrastructure supplier, according to TechCrunch AI and Nvidia’s announcement.

The scale of the planned campus has produced several different figures across coverage. Data Center Dynamics reported that Nvidia confirmed backing for 4.25 gigawatts of OpenAI capacity at PORTS-Pike, while OpenAI’s own announcement cited approximately 8 gigawatts-IT. Those figures may refer to different phases, capacity definitions or portions of the broader development. The public announcements establish the campus as a multigigawatt project, but the exact deployment schedule remains unsettled.

The Ohio project is tied to a much larger financial relationship between Nvidia and OpenAI, but the size and structure of that relationship remain unclear. Bloomberg described a commitment of as much as $105 billion connected to the Ohio data center, while CNBC reported talks involving an AI backstop worth up to $250 billion. Those amounts differ sharply from the $1.5 billion SB Energy investment disclosed by Nvidia.

Other coverage focused on a separate proposed Nvidia investment in OpenAI. Finance Yahoo described an investment of up to $100 billion, while Techzine, Vellatimes, Bignewsnetwork and Startuptalky reported figures near $30 billion. The Wall Street Journal’s headline said a $100 billion OpenAI-Nvidia megadeal was on ice, and Dispatch described financing discussions for the Ohio campus. Together, the reports point to negotiations spanning infrastructure, funding and long-term supply, rather than a single settled transaction.

PORTS-Pike gives OpenAI access to a planned power and data center platform outside the company’s existing technology hubs. An 8-gigawatt-IT reservation would represent a substantial expansion path for training and inference workloads, which require large supplies of electricity, advanced accelerators and supporting network infrastructure.

The project also ties OpenAI’s growth to public-sector and regional economic goals. OpenAI identified the U.S. Department of Energy as a partner and linked the campus to thousands of Southern Ohio jobs. SB Energy contributes site development expertise, while Nvidia supplies the hardware relationship. The arrangement illustrates how AI infrastructure is increasingly being built through partnerships among model developers, chip companies, energy developers and government agencies.

Nvidia’s participation extends beyond selling chips to OpenAI. The company’s investment in SB Energy gives it exposure to the physical facilities that will consume its processors, while its wider discussions with OpenAI connect financing, capacity planning and hardware procurement. Nvidia and OpenAI also announced a strategic partnership covering AI infrastructure, according to Nvidia’s corporate announcement.

That structure reinforces Nvidia’s position across several layers of the AI supply chain. OpenAI gains a large planned computing base; SB Energy gains a major customer and strategic backer; Nvidia gains a role in both financing and supplying the infrastructure. The arrangement also increases the importance of execution, including power delivery, construction, equipment deployment and the terms governing any broader investment.

The next milestones are the project’s financing terms, construction schedule, power arrangements and final capacity definitions. OpenAI’s 8-gigawatt figure, Nvidia’s 4.25-gigawatt backing figure and the larger financial amounts cited in market coverage need to be reconciled as the participants disclose more details.

For the AI industry, PORTS-Pike signals that access to electricity and purpose-built data centers is becoming as consequential as access to models and chips. The project’s job commitments provide a regional rationale, while Nvidia’s financial role demonstrates how hardware suppliers are helping shape new computing campuses. The outcome will depend on whether the partners convert announced agreements and discussions into operating capacity.