OpenAI plans $20B 'Project Camellia' data center near Savannah

OpenAI just picked a mostly rural stretch of coastal Georgia for what may be its biggest single site announcement of the year, and the numbers are the story. According to Axios, the company plans a 1,400-acre, roughly $20 billion campus in Effingham County, about a 30-minute drive from downtown Savannah, dubbed "Project Camellia." Bloomberg reports the total spend could actually exceed $30 billion once the build is complete, so take the headline figure as the low end.

The piece worth staring at is the power contract. OpenAI has secured 3.2 gigawatts from Georgia Power, delivered in phases from 2028 to 2032. That is not a data center in the traditional retail-colo sense, it is a multi-year utility-scale energy commitment being staged like a power plant coming online. Several hundred megawatts arrive first in 2028, with the balance layered in over the following four years. Georgia Power gets a very large anchor customer; OpenAI gets a runway long enough to line up chips, capital, and staffing without racing the grid.

The local politics are the part most tech readers will underweight. OpenAI is pledging $80 million in community benefits toward schools, public safety, health care, workforce training, and housing, plus up to $71 million in Codex credits for Georgia college students. In exchange the company would receive a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years, and even with that break is projected to become the county's largest taxpayer. Jobs start at 400 six-figure roles when the site opens in 2028 and grow to 1,000 by 2032.

The honest caveat is that headline dollar figures on hyperscale sites tend to drift, the $20B versus $30B gap between outlets is a flag, and the closed-loop cooling and residential rate guarantees are OpenAI's claims rather than settled facts on the ground. What the reporting doesn't yet give you is which chip and cloud partners actually fill those 3.2 gigawatts, or whether Camellia is formally being counted inside the Stargate umbrella.

If you are a utility, a state economic development office, or a regional supplier from Charleston down to Jacksonville, the takeaway is simpler. The coastal Southeast just became a live bidder for the next round of frontier-model infrastructure, and the template Effingham accepted, big abatement, community fund, closed-loop cooling, phased grid ramp, is the one your county will be handed next.