OpenAI says it will spend $750B on infrastructure through 2030

In short: OpenAI says it will spend $750 billion on infrastructure like data centers through 2030.

What happened

OpenAI told investors it now expects to spend $750 billion on infrastructure through 2030, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal that was covered by TechCrunch. TechCrunch says this is about 25% higher than what OpenAI estimated earlier this year.

A major early project is a planned $20 billion data center campus in Georgia called Project Camellia. A data center is a large building filled with computers that run online services, like a warehouse full of machines. The campus is expected to cover about 1,400 acres northwest of Savannah.

Georgia Power, the local utility, said the site will draw at least 3.2 gigawatts of electricity, with that generating capacity expected to come online between 2028 and 2032. OpenAI said it will pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric service for the new data center. The county where it will be built, Effingham County, is reported to be giving OpenAI a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years.

Neither OpenAI nor Georgia Power has said exactly how the project will be powered. TechCrunch notes that regulatory filings suggest Georgia Power plans to add significant new electricity capacity, much of it from natural gas, along with some solar and large batteries.

Why it matters

These projects can affect local power bills, the reliability of the electric grid during heat waves, and local air pollution, because generating more electricity often means building more power plants. It also shows how expensive it is becoming to run modern AI systems, which need huge amounts of computing power (think of it like running a very large factory that uses electricity nonstop).

Source: TechCrunch AI