OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, plans to spend at least $20 billion on a massive new artificial intelligence data center near Savannah, Georgia, as demand for AI software continues to increase. The company has secured 3.2 gigawatts of electricity from Georgia Power Co., a utility serving the state, for the planned complex in Effingham County. Several hundred megawatts are expected to become available beginning in 2028, while the remaining development could continue through 2032. Sachin Katti, OpenAI's vice president of compute strategy, said the fully developed project would probably cost more than $30 billion, with OpenAI currently searching for partners to help finance and build the facility.
The project could become one of OpenAI's largest data center investments and represents another major step in Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman's long-term plan to spend trillions of dollars on physical AI infrastructure. OpenAI has already partnered with developers on facilities across Europe, the Middle East and several U.S. states through its Stargate initiative, although the company has recently reduced its involvement in some projects in the UK and Norway and declined to expand its main Stargate campus in Texas. Stargate was originally planned as a joint venture with Oracle Corp., a technology company involved in the initiative, and SoftBank Group Corp., a participating Japanese company, but newer developments have used different combinations of partners. OpenAI is also taking greater control of facility design and plans to publicly release standardized designs for data centers, hardware and networking, potentially helping lower costs and shorten construction timelines.
The investment comes as competing AI companies continue to secure enormous amounts of computing capacity. Anthropic PBC, an artificial intelligence company, has agreed to access more than 300 megawatts from Colossus 1, a large Memphis data center operated by SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX, an aerospace company, while Meta Platforms Inc. NASDAQ:META, a technology company that co-founded the Open Compute Project, has committed more than $250 billion to one data center campus in Louisiana. Investors may view these projects as evidence of continued demand for power and data center development, although growing opposition over utility prices and environmental effects could delay some investments. OpenAI said it will pay the full cost of the Georgia facility's electricity and supporting infrastructure, reduce power consumption during periods of high demand, use a closed-loop cooling system to limit water usage, pay hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local taxes and commission an independent audit of its commitments.