OpenAI announced Wednesday that it will spend $750 billion on infrastructure through 2030, some 25% more than it estimated earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The renewed blitz comes as its Stargate data center project appears to have stalled.
The first salvo in OpenAI’s spending spree will be a $20 billion data center campus in Georgia known as Project Camellia. The development will span 1,400 acres northwest of Savannah and will draw at least 3.2 gigawatts of power from Georgia Power, the region’s utility. The generating capacity is expected to become available between 2028 and 2032.
The AI company said it would “pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric-service costs” for the new data center. The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) adopted a rule last year to prevent utilities from passing on costs associated with new users drawing more than 100 megawatts.
Georgia Power also said OpenAI will reduce its power draw by up to 1 gigawatt during periods of high demand on the grid.
OpenAI is receiving a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years from Effingham County, according to the Effingham Herald.
Neither OpenAI nor Georgia Power has said how Project Camellia will be powered. TechCrunch asked both companies for specifics but did not immediately receive a reply.
Regulatory filings might provide some clues. In December, Georgia Power received approval from the PSC to produce an additional 9,885 megawatts. The utility told the PSC it expects to have all the capacity contracted by the end of 2026. The OpenAI deal accounts for about a third of that.
Based on documents Georgia Power filed with the PSC, most of the new capacity will come from natural gas. The utility said it will build or buy from third parties about 5.8 gigawatts of natural gas generating capacity, about a quarter of which will be from more polluting simple-cycle turbines. Altogether, the new fossil fuel capacity will more than double Georgia Power’s natural gas fleet. The remainder will be supplied by grid-scale batteries and solar.
While electricity from Georgia Power is expected to start flowing in 2028, OpenAI did not give a timeline for when the first GPU will be turned on. That could happen sooner than 2028 given that OpenAI recently hired Brett Mayo to lead data center construction. Mayo previously worked at xAI, where he oversaw the Colossus data center in Memphis.
Colossus was built in record time, but it has allegedly taken its toll on local air quality, according to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center. The xAI data center has been running dozens of unpermitted natural gas turbines, claiming exemption from federal clean air regulations.
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