- The US Department of Energy announced a 10-gigawatt data center project at a former nuclear fuel processing site in Ohio.
- The project will include 9.2 gigawatts of natural-gas power to support artificial-intelligence infrastructure.
- SB Energy, backed by the Japanese company SoftBank, will help develop power and transmission systems.
As global demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure rises, the United States partnered with Japanese investors on Friday to build a large-scale data center in Ohio.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Commerce (DOC) announced a “public-private partnership” with SoftBank (SFTBY), a Japanese investment conglomerate, and American Electric Power (AEP), Ohio, to develop a 10-gigawatt data center at a former nuclear fuel processing site in Pike County.
The project will combine computing infrastructure with dedicated power generation to support large-scale data processing. The development is also expected to produce 9.2 gigawatts from natural gas, “which will connect to the local grid and provide power to a new 10 GW data center development at the Portsmouth Site in Pike County, Ohio, at no cost to American families”. The facility, which will be powered by SB Energy, a leading renewable energy platform, will help with transmission upgrades.
This investment is part of a broader US-Japan strategic trade and investment agreement finalized in July last year, under which Japan committed $550 billion in direct investment into the United States. The deal included partnerships in energy, artificial intelligence, and manufacturing, as well as provisions to reduce tariffs on Japanese imports.
Masayoshi Son, the Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp, noted that the “partnership with the Department of Energy strengthens America’s AI leadership, secures the energy and compute needed for the future, and powers the next era of innovation for the United States.”
SoftBank stock closed down 3.45% on Friday. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around SFTBY remained in the ‘bearish’ territory, as chatter levels around it remained ‘low’ over the past day. The SFTBY stock has been down over 24% so far this year.
Energy Strategy Diverges Across Ohio Projects
Last year, Ohio had already emerged as a key hub for data center energy supply, with TotalEnergies (TTE) signing an agreement to provide Google (GOOG) with 1.5 terawatt-hours of electricity over 15 years to power its operations in the state. The energy was set to come from the Montpelier solar farm in Ohio, connected to the PJM grid, as part of a broader push by tech firms to secure clean, reliable power to meet rapidly growing demand for AI-driven data centers.
Rising power demand has been reshaping capital flows into data infrastructure. A report by S&P Global projects that U.S. data center power demand would nearly triple by 2030.
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