Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group is planning to build a massive gas-fired power plant in the United States with an aim to meet the growing electricity demands of artificial intelligence data centres.
The natural-gas plant is part of a promise by Japan to invest $550 billion in the United States that Tokyo agreed to in exchange for reduced trade tariffs.
Construction of the $33.3 billion power plant with a “large-scale” power generation capacity of 9.2 gigawatts (GW) will be undertaken in the state of Ohio, SoftBank said on Saturday.
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“This is a size bigger than any power plant, I think, in the world,” SoftBank’s flamboyant CEO Masayoshi Son said at a ceremony in Ohio to announce the project.
“At least in the United States, for sure, this is the biggest power generation in one location,” he added.
The goal is to develop “the smartest intelligence in the world”, Son said.
Tech investor SoftBank is a major backer of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Son is a long-time ally of US President Donald Trump.
The 9.2 GW gas-fired plant is part of an overall plan for the site to power 10 GW of data centre capacity, the US Department of Energy said in a statement.
“Once a cornerstone of America’s national security during the Cold War — enriching uranium for our nation’s defence — the Portsmouth site is now being transformed to help the United States win the AI race,” it said.
Data centre surge
SoftBank also announced on Saturday that a consortium with major American and Japanese firms will help build the plant and develop AI infrastructure in Ohio.
Data centres that can train and run chatbots, image generators and other AI tools are being built on a dramatic scale worldwide as an investment boom into the fast-evolving technology shows no sign of slowing.
A study last month found that industrial investment surged by nearly a third in 2025, thanks to massive investment in AI and data centres in the United States.
But the construction of a gas-powered power plant also threatens to add to huge carbon emissions linked to the rise of AI and data centres.
Scientists say growing emissions are fuelling a rise in global temperatures that could turn the planet into a “hellish hothouse”.
While some firms are embracing greener data centres, experts say running data centres on clean energy remains a difficult task due to their need for a huge amount of stable energy.
AFP, with additional editing and inputs from Vishakha Saxena
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