NVIDIA Named Exclusive AI Compute Provider at Ohio’s PORTS-Pike Campus with OpenAI as Customer

A former federal nuclear site in Pike County, Ohio, is being transformed into one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects announced to date. On 17 August 2026, NVIDIA confirmed it has secured land, power and shell capacity at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, where it will serve as the exclusive AI compute infrastructure provider — and OpenAI will be the one using it.

The announcement lands at a moment when the race to build AI infrastructure at scale is moving faster than most people expected even two years ago. Data centres are the new power stations, and whoever controls the compute controls the future of AI development.

What’s Actually Been Agreed

The structure of the deal is worth spelling out clearly. SB Energy, the clean energy developer behind the campus, will build, own and operate the data centre facility. OpenAI has entered into an agreement to secure around 8 gigawatts-IT of compute capacity at the site — a staggering figure that gives some sense of the sheer scale being planned here. And NVIDIA will provide the hardware backbone, using what it describes as its full-stack DSX AI factory platform.

That 20-year lease to OpenAI is the anchor that makes the whole arrangement work. It gives SB Energy the long-term revenue certainty to justify building out a campus of this size, while locking OpenAI into a dedicated, purpose-built AI compute facility for the better part of the next three decades.

NVIDIA’s announcement frames the deal as part of a broader push to expand AI infrastructure across the United States, with the PORTS-Pike campus sitting at the centre of that ambition.

The Site Itself

The PORTS-Pike Technology Campus sits on land tied to the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio — a site with a long history in US energy and defence. Its redevelopment into a frontier AI data centre is being treated as a significant infrastructure project at the federal level. The US Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council granted the campus FAST-41 coverage on 16 June 2026, describing it as a frontier training AI data centre and new power generation project. FAST-41 is a federal mechanism designed to speed up the permitting process for major infrastructure, so that designation signals the project has genuine government backing behind it.

Meanwhile, the campus is being presented as a long-term, phased buildout. Some external reporting suggests deployment could begin in phases from 2028, though that timetable has not been confirmed in the official announcements from NVIDIA, OpenAI or SB Energy.

The Money

Reports have circulated that NVIDIA will provide credit support and invest around £1.2 billion (reported as US$1.5 billion) in SB Energy as part of this arrangement. That figure has not been independently verified from official sources, so treat it as unverified for now. If confirmed, it would represent a hefty financial commitment from NVIDIA — going well beyond simply supplying chips and into actively backing the infrastructure company building the campus.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s chief executive, said: “AI infrastructure is the foundation of the AI era, and we’re proud to partner with SB Energy and OpenAI to build one of the world’s most powerful AI computing campuses.”

What Comes Next

The questions that tend to follow announcements of this size are predictable, but they’re worth raising. A campus targeting 8 gigawatts-IT of compute will place enormous demands on local power grids and water supplies. The energy footprint of AI data centres is already a live political issue in both the United States and the UK, and a project of this scale will attract scrutiny from environmental groups and local communities in southern Ohio regardless of the federal permitting support it has already received.

For now, the official position from all three companies involved is straightforward: this is a major AI infrastructure expansion, it has federal backing, and it is proceeding as planned. Whether the phased buildout proceeds on the timelines being discussed, and whether NVIDIA’s reported financial commitment to SB Energy is formally confirmed, are the two things to watch in the months ahead.

What This Means for Kent Residents

There’s no direct impact on Kent from this announcement — no local contracts, no Kent-based partners, and no immediate effect on public services in the county. But for anyone in Kent who uses OpenAI’s tools, whether that’s ChatGPT for work or creative projects, the long-term build-out of dedicated compute at this scale is ultimately what keeps those services running and developing. More broadly, the sheer energy appetite of projects like this is shaping the global conversation about AI’s environmental costs — a debate that UK regulators and energy planners are watching closely.