OpenAI Unveils Project Camellia: a $20B, 3.2-Gigawatt Campus It Will Build Itself in Georgia

OpenAI has announced Project Camellia, a 3.2-gigawatt data center campus in Effingham County, Georgia, representing at least $20 billion in private investment — and a first for the company: it will design and build the facility itself, rather than leasing capacity from partners.

OpenAI becomes its own landlord

The four-building campus will rise on 1,400 acres at the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, about 45 minutes from Savannah. Georgia Power will supply electricity under a 25-year agreement delivered in phases from 2028 through 2032, with OpenAI covering all infrastructure and electric-service costs — a structure designed to blunt the ratepayer backlash that has dogged hyperscale projects elsewhere.

Until now, OpenAI's Stargate buildout has run through partners — Oracle, Crusoe, SoftBank and others. Camellia marks the company's decision to take construction risk directly, a step that puts it in the same self-build league as Google, Meta and Microsoft and signals how central physical infrastructure has become to its strategy.

Sweetening the deal

OpenAI is spending heavily on local goodwill: an $80 million community benefits fund covering education, public safety, healthcare and small business support, plus up to $71 million in Codex credits for Georgia colleges, universities and technical schools. Effingham County approved a 50 percent property tax abatement for 15 years. The campus is expected to create roughly 400 permanent jobs initially — operations, maintenance, security and data safety — scaling toward 1,000. The company even held a public open house in Effingham County the day after the announcement.

The power queue is the product

Camellia's 2028–2032 power phasing underlines the industry's real constraint: electricity, not silicon. With Meta targeting 14 gigawatts by 2027, Hut 8 fully booking a 1GW Texas campus and grid interconnection queues stretching years, the labs that locked in utility agreements early are now the ones that get to grow. OpenAI just locked in a quarter-century of Georgia's.