OpenAI announced Project Camellia, a planned 3.2 gigawatt AI data center campus in Effingham County, Georgia

On July 22, OpenAI announced Project Camellia, a 3.2-gigawatt data center campus in Effingham County, Georgia, representing at least $20 billion in private capital investment. The four-building campus will occupy approximately 1,400 acres within the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub near Rincon, positioning it as one of the largest single AI computing facilities ever announced in the United States.

The company has signed a 25-year power supply agreement with Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, with electricity delivery scheduled in phases between 2028 and 2032. OpenAI will pay the full cost of all electric infrastructure and service required for the project, shielding existing Georgia Power customers from any rate impact. According to Bloomberg reporting, OpenAI Vice President of Compute Strategy Sachin Katti estimates the project will cost more than $30 billion at full build-out.

Project Camellia comprises four buildings covering approximately 101 acres within the 2,600-acre Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, a site already zoned for industrial use. The campus is located just outside Rincon, roughly 25 miles northwest of Savannah. OpenAI has not yet selected a finance and development partner for the Georgia campus, which sits within the company's broader Stargate infrastructure program—a multi-hundred-billion-dollar initiative announced in early 2025.

The facility will employ a closed-loop water system for cooling, which OpenAI says will avoid diverting water from local communities or raising the temperature of local water sources. This design is intended to minimize water consumption compared to conventional evaporative cooling approaches used at many hyperscale data centers. The phased power delivery arrangement, with several hundred megawatts expected to come online starting in 2028 and the remainder ramping through the early 2030s, reflects the scale of the infrastructure buildout required.

A defining feature of the contract is OpenAI's commitment to up to 1,000 megawatts of flexible demand response, allowing Georgia Power to reduce deliveries to the campus during periods of high grid demand. Georgia Power described this as "among the largest single-facility demand response commitments in the country," noting it could reduce the need for additional generation resources and potentially lower long-term costs for other customers. This arrangement follows January 2025 updates to Georgia Public Service Commission regulations that require large data center customers to bear the full cost of infrastructure and service.

OpenAI has committed $80 million toward a community benefits fund covering education, public safety, healthcare, and small business resources in Effingham County. The company also pledged up to $71 million in credits for its Codex coding software at Georgia colleges, universities, and technical schools. The project is expected to create approximately 400 initial permanent positions in operations, maintenance, security, and data safety roles, with potential to scale to 1,000 permanent jobs, alongside thousands of temporary construction positions during build-out.

Effingham County approved a 50 percent property tax abatement for 15 years. Despite the reduction, OpenAI is expected to become the county's largest taxpayer, generating revenue that could fund "Project Zero," the county's initiative to reduce average homeowner property tax rates by 40 percent as early as next year.

At 3.2GW contracted capacity, Project Camellia would rank among the largest single-site power commitments for any data center globally, exceeding the scale of most hyperscaler campus announcements to date. For context, 3.2 gigawatts is enough electricity to power more than 2 million homes.

A public forum is scheduled for late July 2026 at Effingham County College and Career Academy, where residents will have the opportunity to raise questions about the project. Some community members have already expressed frustration over perceived lack of transparency during the planning process.