Softbank turns a cold-war uranium plant into a 10 gw ai fortress, fed by fracked gas
SoftBank is quietly drafting the largest AI power grab on U.S. soil: a 10-gigawatt data-city rising inside a shuttered uranium enrichment site in Ohio, bankrolled by a $33 billion fleet of gas turbines that will belch out electricity—and carbon—until at least 2030.
The numbers are obscene
Phase one alone—800 MW—will cost $30-40 billion and switch on in early 2028. By then, the first 200-ton turbine arrives, freshly ordered, already stamped “Made for AI.” Rich Hossfeld, co-CEO of SoftBank’s energy arm, says the rest follow in a conveyor-belt cadence: one a year, every year, until the decade ends and the prairie hums like an airport runway.
The site, a federal enclave once reserved for nuclear warheads, gives SoftBank two gifts Washington rarely hands out: sovereignty over land use and a direct line to the grid backbone that kept uranium centrifuges spinning. No county zoning hearings, no neighbor lawsuits—just concrete, copper, and coolant.
Why gas, why now
Because solar can’t spin up 10 GW before the election cycle resets. Because battery factories are booked through 2027. Because China’s data-center build-out is measured in coal plants per quarter, and the White House wants a counter-narrative it can tweet. The Trump administration has folded the project into its Japan trade truce—tariffs on cars drop, turbines rise, geopolitics baked into every BTU.
Environmental ledgers look uglier. Each turbine, running at 55 percent capacity, will cough out roughly 3.5 million tons of CO₂ annually—equal to adding 750,000 cars on Ohio roads that don’t exist yet. SoftBank calls it a “bridge fuel” until fusion or small modular reactors arrive. Translation: we’ll decarbonize the moment someone else pays for it.
The hidden invoice
Mid-western ratepayers will underwrite the transmission upgrades; local aquifers will swallow the evaporative cooling losses—1.5 billion gallons a year once the campus is fully lit. Meanwhile, retail electricity prices in PJM West have already climbed 34 % since 2022. The AI boom externalizes its thirst, and Ohioans will taste it on their monthly bill before they ever prompt the models hosted inside.
SoftBank’s gambit is the loudest signal yet that the AI arms race is no longer about who codes the smartest model, but who can plug it into the dirtiest, most reliable megawatts before the other guy does. In that contest, the planet is the concession stand, and the tab just keeps running.