OpenAI announced Wednesday that it will spend $750 billion on infrastructure by 2030, about 25% more than expected earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The new shock comes as the company’s Stargate data center project appears to have stalled.
The first salvo of OpenAI’s massive spending will be a $20 billion data center campus in Georgia known as Project Camelia. The development will span 1,400 acres northwest of Savannah and will receive at least 3.2 gigawatts of electricity from Georgia Power, the region’s utility. Power generation capacity is expected to be available between 2028 and 2032.
The AI company said it will “pay the full cost of infrastructure and electrical services” for the new data center. Last year, the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) adopted rules that prevent utilities from passing on the costs of new electricity over 100 megawatts.
Georgia Power also said OpenAI will reduce power consumption by up to 1 gigawatt during periods of high demand on the grid.
According to the Effingham Herald, OpenAI has received a 50% property tax abatement from Effingham County for 15 years.
Neither OpenAI nor Georgia Power have disclosed how Project Camellia will work. TechCrunch reached out to both companies for further details, but did not immediately receive a response.
Regulatory filings may provide some clues. In December, Georgia Power received approval from the PSC to generate an additional 9,885 megawatts. The utility told the PSC that it expects all capacity contracts to be completed by the end of 2026. The contract with OpenAI accounts for about one-third of that amount.
Most of the new generation capacity will come from natural gas, according to Georgia Power’s filing with the PSC. The company said it plans to build or purchase about 5.8 gigawatts of natural gas power generation capacity from third parties, about a quarter of which will come from more polluting simple-cycle turbines. In total, the new fossil fuel production capacity will be more than double Georgia Power’s natural gas holdings. The rest will be provided by grid-scale batteries and solar.
Power from Georgia Power is expected to begin transmitting in 2028, but OpenAI did not provide a timeline for when the first GPUs would be turned on. That could happen sooner than 2028, considering OpenAI recently hired Brett Mayo to lead data center construction. Mayo previously worked at xAI, where he oversaw the Colossus data center in Memphis.
Although Colossus was built in record time, it is having a negative impact on local air quality, according to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center. xAI Data Center has been operating dozens of unauthorized natural gas turbines, claiming exemptions from federal clean air regulations.
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