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Data centers in Pike County, Ohio: 1 project mapped
Pike County is the proposed home of what federal officials call the largest data center ever planned. On March 20, 2026, cabinet members broke ground on the PORTS Technology Campus at the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant south of Piketon, a Cold War uranium enrichment site still being decontaminated. SB Energy, a SoftBank company, plans a campus that could reach 10 gigawatts (10,000 megawatts) of power, starting with an 800-megawatt first phase, powered by a $33 billion, 9.2-gigawatt natural gas plant paid for with Japanese government funds under the U.S.-Japan trade deal, and a $4.2 billion transmission program with AEP Ohio, DCD, WOUB and cleveland.com reported. SoftBank has said the campus would take 35,000 construction workers at peak and about 2,500 to run. OpenAI is in advanced talks to lease the campus, and Nvidia has confirmed it will back about 4.25 gigawatts of it, DCD reported. The March ceremony did not start the build: in August a SoftBank spokesperson, Ally Copple, said the first phase of construction would begin later in 2026, with work on the whole campus continuing through 2032, The Post in Athens reported.
Officials have promised residents their bills will not rise. "I will commit right here, right now, that we will protect the electricity bill," SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son said, adding that the company would donate $40 million to the community. County officials' concern is revenue: the federal government still owns most of the 3,700-acre site, so leased land would pay no property tax. "What we're asking is … let's negotiate like it's private property," Commissioner Tony Montgomery told WOUB, saying SB Energy had been open to a payment in lieu of taxes.
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Unlike most data center fights, there has been little organized opposition. At an SB Energy open house in Waverly in July, more than 100 residents looked at plans for the gas plant, which would cover 770 acres just south of the enrichment site; Inside Climate News found no sign of an opposition campaign. Gina Doyle, who lives about three miles away and opposes the project, attributed that to the region's long dependence on federal jobs at the plant. Others point to the site's history: Vina Colley, a former PORTS electrician who leads Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security, told The Post that contamination must be cleaned up before construction, and a 2022 study by epidemiologist Joseph Mangano found Pike County had the highest cancer incidence in Ohio. SoftBank says SB Energy has committed to paying for accelerated cleanup.
The gas plant still needs approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board, the state agency that signs off on power plants, and new pipelines to reach it may take years, the Ohio Oil and Gas Association told cleveland.com.
Data center projects on record in Pike County
Grouped by the town each site sits in. The report above may name projects that have no record here yet.
Piketon1
| Project | Company | Status | Power | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoftBank Data Center/PORTS Technology CampusPiketon | SoftBank | Proposed | 800 MW |
Where this comes from
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Every project above is drawn from public records, filings and local reporting. Each row links to what it is based on. Statuses change, so check the source date before you rely on one. Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] and it gets fixed.