OpenAI's AI infrastructure spending balloons to $750B, first project is a $20B Georgia data center campus

OpenAI's AI infrastructure spending plan has ballooned to $750 billion — a figure roughly equivalent to Sweden's entire gross domestic product. According to a TechCrunch report published July 22, the company plans to deploy this sum by 2030 across AI data centers and supporting infrastructure nationwide.

The first major project under this massive spending plan is Project Camellia, a $20 billion data center campus in Georgia. OpenAI said it would pay the full cost of the infrastructure and electric-service costs for the facility, an unprecedented commitment in the company's investment strategy.

Georgia Power also disclosed that OpenAI will reduce its power draw by up to 1 gigawatt during periods of high demand on the grid. This means the data center can actively participate in grid load balancing during peak hours, easing pressure on the local power system.

According to the Effingham Herald, OpenAI is receiving a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years from Effingham County. While tax incentives are common for large data center projects, the scale of this abatement reflects the intense competition among local governments to attract AI infrastructure investment.

Although electricity from Georgia Power is expected to start flowing in 2028, OpenAI has not given a timeline for when the first GPUs will be turned on at the facility. However, the company recently hired Brett Mayo to lead data center construction, suggesting that physical buildout may outpace grid readiness.

This spending plan builds on the earlier Stargate initiative, a collaboration between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank with public support from the Trump administration. The $750 billion figure represents a dramatic upward revision of the investment expectations under the Stargate framework.

The spending reflects the physical cost of the AI arms race: every leap in model capability demands enormous amounts of compute, electricity, and land. For competitors including Google and Anthropic, OpenAI's infrastructure scale creates a significant first-mover advantage and barrier to entry.

Key questions ahead include how OpenAI will sequence its capital raises, what energy sources (nuclear, natural gas, or renewables) will power these data centers, and whether the massive infrastructure spending can be justified before model revenue grows fast enough to cover it.