OpenAI’s AI spending spree has ballooned to $750B
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- OpenAI announced it will spend $750 billion on infrastructure through 2030, about 25% more than it estimated earlier this year, as its Stargate data center project appears to have stalled.
- Project Camellia, a $20 billion data center campus, will span 1,400 acres northwest of Savannah and draw at least 3.2 gigawatts from Georgia Power, with generating capacity expected between 2028 and 2032.
- OpenAI said it will pay the full cost of infrastructure and electric service for the new site, and is receiving a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years from Effingham County.
- Georgia Power received PSC approval in December for 9,885 additional megawatts — about a third of which is accounted for by the OpenAI deal — and filed plans for roughly 5.8 gigawatts of new natural gas capacity, about a quarter from more polluting simple-cycle turbines.
- OpenAI hired Brett Mayo, formerly of xAI where he oversaw the Colossus data center in Memphis, to lead data center construction — a facility now facing an NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center lawsuit over dozens of allegedly unpermitted natural gas turbines.
- Neither OpenAI nor Georgia Power has disclosed how Project Camellia will be powered; TechCrunch asked both for specifics and had not received a reply at publication.
Why it matters: OpenAI is absorbing costs the Georgia Public Service Commission normally shields other ratepayers from — full infrastructure plus electric-service bills plus a 15-year tax break — while the utility more than doubles its natural gas fleet to feed the campus, with a quarter of new gas capacity coming from dirtier simple-cycle turbines. The hire of xAI's former Colossus builder, who now inherits a site whose Memphis predecessor is being sued over unpermitted turbines, signals that construction speed may again outpace permitting.
