OpenAI is planning a large data center development in Effingham County, Georgia, under the name "Project Camellia," and has secured a major electricity agreement with Georgia Power. Effingham County sits near Savannah in a corridor of Georgia that has attracted growing data center investment, drawn by available land and grid capacity.

According to the company, the deal covers 3.2 gigawatts of power to be supplied in phases from 2028 through 2032 — a scale comparable to the output of multiple large power plants and among the largest single-site power commitments publicly disclosed for an AI infrastructure project. OpenAI says the project will be privately funded and that it will cover the associated costs itself, stating that local electricity bills will not rise because of the development. Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, operates under the regulatory oversight of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which reviews large resource agreements.

OpenAI said the facility will use a closed-loop water-cooling system designed to keep ongoing water consumption low. Water and energy use remain recurring points of criticism for large data centers, including those built to support artificial intelligence systems. OpenAI has so far released only broad figures about its own resource consumption.

The company also announced local commitments tied to the project, including $80 million for schools, healthcare, and housing in the area. In addition, OpenAI said it would provide up to $71 million in Codex credits for students in Georgia. Codex is OpenAI's coding-focused product, and similar student-access programs have also been used by Anthropic and other AI companies.

OpenAI's announcement comes as data center projects face increasing scrutiny and protests across parts of the United States. Residents and local groups have raised concerns about heavy electricity and water demand, noise, and the limited number of permanent local jobs that such facilities may create. The scale of power required for AI training and inference workloads has intensified a broader competition among technology companies for long-term energy contracts, with several major operators pursuing agreements spanning a decade or more.

OpenAI published details of the Effingham County infrastructure plan on its official website: Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community.