NVIDIA Pours Up to $105B Into Ohio AI Data Center Megaproject
NVIDIA is committing as much as $105 billion to secure land, power and shell capacity for the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, a planned 10-GW AI data center complex in Piketon, Ohio, ENR reports.
The site sits on the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a shuttered federal uranium enrichment facility in southern Ohio. SB Energy, a SoftBank Group subsidiary, will develop, own and operate the campus, including power generation, delivery systems and the buildings themselves. NVIDIA will supply computing technology for tenant OpenAI’s large-scale AI workloads and is separately investing $1.5 billion directly in SB Energy. Bechtel and Kiewit Corp. were already tapped earlier this year for engineering, procurement and construction work, ENR previously reported.
Market Impact
The campus calls for 10 GW of data center capacity backed by roughly equal power generation, with about 9.2 GW coming from natural gas. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said the initial deployment will provide 4.25 gigawatts of AI factory capacity, and each generation of systems deployed at the site could represent about 1.5 million NVIDIA GPUs, or roughly $150 billion to $200 billion in NVIDIA revenue, with the site supporting multiple upgrade cycles over 20 years.
SB Energy CEO Rich Hossfeld told CNBC that his company’s development role, covering land acquisition, power solutions and turnkey shell construction, represents “30 to 40%” of what he described as a roughly $500 billion overall project. SB Energy also plans to invest at least $4.2 billion in new regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio, a subsidiary of American Electric Power, aimed at shielding ratepayers from rising energy costs.
What It Means for Subcontractors
- Electrical and mechanical subcontractors should watch for subcontract packages tied to the 9.2 GW of natural gas generation capacity and the shell buildouts, since Bechtel and Kiewit already hold the EPC roles and will need trade partners for the 4.25-GW initial phase.
- Civil and site-development contractors in southern Ohio have a long-term pipeline here: SB Energy’s plan spans multiple upgrade cycles over 20 years on the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site, meaning repeat mobilization opportunities beyond the first build phase.
- Grid infrastructure and utility-scale electrical contractors should track AEP Ohio’s role in the project, given SB Energy’s committed $4.2 billion investment in regional grid upgrades, a package likely to generate separate transmission and substation work from the data center construction itself.
- Companies bidding into this corridor should size crews and equipment for hyperscale-level shell construction, since Hossfeld’s own estimate puts SB Energy’s land, power and shell scope at 30% to 40% of a roughly $500 billion total project cost.
