OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has announced that it plans to spend a staggering $750 billion building the infrastructure that powers its artificial-intelligence systems between now and 2030.
The figure is about 25 percent higher than the estimate the company gave earlier in 2026, a sign of just how quickly the race to build bigger and faster AI is escalating.
Modern AI runs on enormous warehouses full of specialised computers known as data centres, and these facilities consume huge amounts of electricity. That is why much of OpenAI’s spending will go into new sites rather than software alone.
The first major project is a $20 billion data centre near Savannah in Georgia, code-named Project Camellia. It will sit on 1,400 acres and draw at least 3.2 gigawatts of power from utility firm Georgia Power, with capacity expected to come online between 2028 and 2032.
To secure the deal, Effingham County granted OpenAI a 50 percent property-tax break for 15 years. In return, OpenAI has agreed to cut its power use by up to one gigawatt when demand on the local grid is at its highest, easing pressure on ordinary households.
Georgia Power was approved in December to generate an extra 9,885 megawatts and expects to have all of it contracted by the end of 2026, with the OpenAI deal alone accounting for roughly a third of that new capacity. The power will come mainly from natural gas, along with grid-scale batteries and solar.
The company recently hired Brett Mayo, who previously worked on Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus facility in Memphis, to lead its data-centre construction. The announcement comes even as OpenAI’s earlier Stargate data-centre project has reportedly stalled.
Source: TechCrunch.
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