SoftBank will invest up to $3 billion to expand production of equipment for artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and convert its Ohio plant into a modular equipment manufacturing facility. The production equipment will be supplied first to OpenAI's large data center.
According to IT outlet The Information on the 21st, SoftBank plans to invest $3 billion to acquire and remodel an electric vehicle plant in Lordstown, Ohio, from GM and Foxconn. Having completed the acquisition in Aug., SoftBank plans to begin equipment production in the first quarter of next year and supply it to OpenAI's data center in Milam County, Texas, and a facility at an undisclosed location.
The newly produced equipment is developed in a modular design, allowing rapid installation at data center sites with only simple testing. The consolidation between modules is also easy, making it advantageous for incrementally expanding data center capacity. Schneider Electric CTO Jim Simonelli said the modular approach can shorten operational timelines by 10–20% compared with traditional on-site construction, citing cases that reduced 12-month projects to seven to eight months.
In Sept., OpenAI announced the "Stargate" project with SoftBank and Oracle, unveiling plans to build 1.5 GW data centers in both Lordstown and Milam County, Texas. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was said to have told employees of a goal to secure 250 GW of data center capacity by 2033, signaling a major expansion in investment.
OpenAI has been signing AI chip contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars with Nvidia and AMD and is also developing its own server chips in collaboration with Broadcom. Amid concerns over expense burdens, CEO Altman said, "We are reviewing ways to sell computing capacity directly to external parties."