Nov. 20 at 4:54 PM
SoftBank is reportedly set to invest up to
$3 billion to repurpose an electric vehicle plant in Lordstown, Ohio, into a modular data-center manufacturing facility for OpenAI. They acquired the Lordstown property in August for
$375 million, and plan to retool it to build portable, pre-assembled data-center units that can be rapidly deployed — including a smaller, operational data-center on-site as a proof-of-concept.
These modular data centers will serve OpenAI’s expansion needs, especially under the ambitious “Stargate” project, which involves OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle building five AI data centers across the U.S. as part of a
$500 billion national AI infrastructure effort. SoftBank’s move is part of a broader strategy; earlier, it sold a
$5.8 billion stake in Nvidia to raise capital for its AI initiatives.
The facility is expected to start manufacturing these data-center modules in early 2026, helping scale OpenAI’s infrastructure more quickly and flexibly.
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