SoftBank to Invest $33 Billion to Build Largest Power Plant in America To Support Artificial Intelligence A photo of a SoftBank store in Tokyo, Japan (AP) Japanese conglomerate SoftBank announced Saturday plans to build a massive new natural gas-fired power plant in Ohio to power its artificial intelligence data centers. SoftBank, a technology investor, is a major backer of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, and its CEO, Masayoshi Son, is a longtime ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. The natural gas plant is part of a broader $550 billion Japanese investment in the United States, agreed to by Tokyo in exchange for tariff reductions. SoftBank explained that the $33.3 billion power plant, with a "massive" generating capacity of 9.2 gigawatts, will be built at the U.S. Department of Energy's Portsmouth site. “I believe this is the largest power plant in the world,” said Son at a ceremony in Ohio announcing the project. “Certainly, this is the largest single-site power generation project, at least in the United States.” He explained that “the goal is to develop the smartest intelligence in the world.” The U.S. Department of Energy stated that the 9.2-gigawatt gas-fired power plant is part of a comprehensive plan for the site to power data centers with 10 gigawatts of capacity. The statement continued, “The Portsmouth site, once a cornerstone of U.S. national security during the Cold War—where uranium was enriched for national defense purposes—is now being transformed to help the United States win the AI race.” SoftBank announced on Saturday that it had formed an alliance with major U.S. and Japanese companies to help build the plant and develop AI infrastructure in Ohio. Data centers capable of training and running chatbots, image generators, and other AI tools are being built on a massive scale around the world, as the investment boom in this rapidly evolving technology continues. A study released last month showed that industrial investment is projected to increase by about a third in 2025, thanks in large part to investments in AI and data centers in the United States.
