OpenAI raises infrastructure spending to $750 billion through 2030

OpenAI said Wednesday 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 spending blitz comes as OpenAI’s Stargate data center project appears to have stalled. The first piece of the spree is a $20 billion data center campus in Georgia known as Project Camellia. The development will span 1,400 acres northwest of Savannah and draw at least 3.2 gigawatts of power from Georgia Power, the region’s utility, with that generating capacity expected to become available sometime between 2028 and 2032. OpenAI said it would “pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric-service costs” for the new data center.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission adopted a rule last year to prevent utilities from passing on costs tied to new users that draw more than 100 megawatts, and Georgia Power said OpenAI will reduce its power draw by up to 1 gigawatt during periods of high grid demand. OpenAI is also 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 actually be powered; TechCrunch asked both companies for specifics but did not immediately receive a reply.

Regulatory filings offer some clues. In December, Georgia Power received approval from the PSC to produce an additional 9,885 megawatts, and the utility told the commission it expects to have all of that capacity contracted by the end of 2026; the OpenAI deal accounts for about a third of it. 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, roughly a quarter of it from more-polluting simple-cycle turbines. Altogether, the new fossil-fuel capacity will more than double Georgia Power’s natural gas fleet, with the remainder supplied by grid-scale batteries and solar. Electricity from Georgia Power is expected to start flowing in 2028.

OpenAI has not given a timeline for when the first GPU at the site will be turned on, though that could happen sooner than 2028 given that the company recently hired Brett Mayo to lead its 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 a 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.

Why it matters

The scale-up shows OpenAI leaning harder on gas-fired power and local tax breaks to secure compute at a moment when its flagship Stargate buildout is faltering — a strategy that ties the company’s AI ambitions directly to fossil-fuel capacity and to the communities absorbing its environmental footprint.