The project, called Project Camellia, will draw 3.2 gigawatts of power from Georgia Power in phases between 2028 and 2032
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OpenAI announced plans Wednesday to build a data center campus in Effingham County, Georgia, committing $20 billion to the project in order to qualify for a local incentive package. The facility, named Project Camellia, is located within the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, about 45 minutes outside of Savannah, and would be the first data center that OpenAI is designing and building itself.
The company has contracted with Georgia Power to receive 3.2 gigawatts of power, with delivery expected in phases between 2028 and 2032. At the full scale of the project, total costs would likely exceed $30 billion, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI is currently seeking partners to help finance and build the campus, the company said.
Under a 25-year agreement, OpenAI has committed to providing up to 1,000 megawatts of flexible demand response, Georgia Power said. That means OpenAI will reduce its power consumption during periods of peak grid demand before residential customers are affected. Georgia Power said the arrangement is among the largest single-facility demand response commitments in the country.
OpenAI said electricity rates for existing Georgia Power customers will not increase because of the project, and that it will pay the full cost of electrical infrastructure and service. The data center will use a closed-loop cooling system designed to keep ongoing water use low, the company said.
On the community side, OpenAI said it has pledged $80 million in community benefits across the life of the project, targeting areas including education, public safety, health care, workforce development, housing, and local small business support. OpenAI also anticipates its tax obligations to the state and county will reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, which it said would make it Effingham County's single largest taxpayer. An additional $71 million in credits for OpenAI's Codex coding tool will be made available to eligible students at Georgia colleges and technical schools. In a statement cited by Axios, Effingham County Commissioner Jamie DeLoach said the project's low water demands, its lack of impact on residential energy bills, and the new tax revenue it would bring were among the factors that won over county officials. The county projects that revenue flowing from the facility could cut property tax bills for a typical homeowner by roughly 40%.
OpenAI plans to hold a public open house on Thursday where residents can meet the project team and provide input that will shape a formal community compact. The company also said it will commission an annual independent audit to verify compliance with its commitments.
The Georgia project comes as OpenAI has raised its projected spending on computing infrastructure to around $750 billion through 2030, up from roughly $600 billion earlier this year. Unlike its other facilities, where OpenAI leases chip capacity from providers such as Oracle $ORCL and Amazon $AMZN Web Services, the Effingham County site marks the company's first venture as principal designer and builder. According to Bloomberg, Sachin Katti, OpenAI's vice president of compute strategy, said the company intends to develop uniform data center blueprints and make them publicly available as a resource for the broader industry.
OpenAI policy chief Chris Lehane told Axios that the company is presenting the Georgia project as a model for early community engagement. "At the end of the day, you're only going to get approvals to be able to build these projects if you're actually doing right by these communities," Lehane said.
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