OpenAI plans to spend $750 billion on infrastructure by 2030, starting with a massive Georgia data centre
The company's first move is a 1,400-acre campus near Savannah that will draw enough electricity to power a small city, mostly from new natural gas plants.
Key points
- OpenAI raised its infrastructure spending target to $750 billion through 2030, up 25% from an earlier estimate made earlier in 2025.
- Project Camellia, a data centre campus northwest of Savannah, Georgia, will cover 1,400 acres and draw at least 3.2 gigawatts of power from Georgia Power.
- Georgia Power plans to generate most of the new electricity from natural gas, which will more than double its existing gas fleet.
- OpenAI is receiving a 50% property tax cut from Effingham County for 15 years.
- The project's first power is expected between 2028 and 2032, though construction could begin sooner.
OpenAI has bumped its infrastructure spending target to $750 billion through 2030. That figure is 25% higher than what the company projected earlier this year, TechCrunch AI first reported, citing the Wall Street Journal.
The centrepiece of that spending is a new data centre campus called Project Camellia. A data centre is, in plain terms, a warehouse full of computers that runs AI software around the clock. This one will sit on 1,400 acres of land northwest of Savannah, Georgia.
The campus will pull at least 3.2 gigawatts of electricity from Georgia Power, the region's utility. For scale, that is roughly the output of three typical nuclear reactors. Power is expected to start flowing between 2028 and 2032.
OpenAI says it will cover the full cost of the infrastructure and electricity bills itself. That matters because Georgia's Public Service Commission, the state body that regulates utilities, passed a rule last year barring utilities from passing costs on to ordinary customers when a single new user draws more than 100 megawatts. Residential and business electricity bills in Georgia should not rise because of this deal.
OpenAI also agreed to cut its power draw by up to 1 gigawatt during peak-demand periods, when the grid is under the most stress.
Effingham County is giving OpenAI a 50% property tax abatement, a reduction in the local tax it would otherwise owe, for 15 years.
Where will all that electricity come from?
Mostly natural gas. Georgia Power received approval in December 2024 to add 9,885 megawatts of new generating capacity, and regulatory filings show roughly 5.8 gigawatts of that will come from natural gas plants. The OpenAI deal accounts for about a third of the total new capacity. The rest will come from grid-scale batteries and solar.
Neither OpenAI nor Georgia Power has confirmed the exact energy mix for Project Camellia specifically.
The speed of construction is also an open question. OpenAI recently hired Brett Mayo to lead data centre building. Mayo previously oversaw the Colossus facility in Memphis for Elon Musk's AI company xAI. Colossus was built unusually fast, but a lawsuit filed by the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center claims the site has been running dozens of natural gas turbines without the required air-quality permits.
If you live near the Savannah area, the project's environmental footprint is worth watching. The new natural gas capacity alone will more than double Georgia Power's existing gas fleet, and regulators will be the main check on how that build-out proceeds.
