The largest data center in the world is slated to be built in Piketon, Ohio, in the southern Appalachian corner of the state. OpenAI, the tech giant that runs ChatGPT, will reportedly use the data center to power its infrastructure.
The plan is to build this enormous campus on U.S. Department of Energy land that’s still contaminated from a government uranium plant that made nuclear weapons during the Cold War. A subsidiary of the Japanese investment company Softbank, an investor in OpenAI, has recently leased the land. Nuclear and natural gas energy will power the massive data center, which is supposed to open in 2028 (although technical experts are skeptical that will be possible). The Trump Administration is clearly enthusiastic: Both U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spoke at the groundbreaking.
The Piketon campus is projected to be the world’s first 10-gigawatt data center. The plan is for the Japanese company to build a massive power plant to fuel it. To comprehend the scale of the potential energy use: 1-gigawatt is the equivalent of the energy used to power as many as 800,000 homes. So, it follows that a 10-gigawatt data center would use enough energy to power 8 million homes. That means the Trump Administration, a Japanese investment firm, and OpenAI want to throw together a behemoth power plant and AI data center in rural Ohio that would use the same energy as some of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. And, despite the unprecedented scale of energy use, Trump officials are simultaneously promising that local residents won’t pay more in their utility bills.
Data centers are wildly unpopular among the American public. At least seven out of 10 Americans oppose having a data center near their home. The disapproval cuts across demographics. Republicans, Democrats, rural, suburban, it doesn’t matter. The majority of Americans don’t like data centers and don’t want them built nearby. The reasons are obvious: They use enormous amounts of electricity and water, they spew pollution, and they drive up costs. There are roughly 200 data centers across Ohio, and some Ohio residents have seen their utility bills increase as much as 30% this summer. While regular people absorb the harms, extremely wealthy tech and financial executives and investors take the profits.
The current Republican candidate for Ohio governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, whose net worth is roughly $3 billion, is one such ultra-wealthy investor. And, no surprise, on the campaign trail he’s said he favors data center expansion in the state and opposes a moratorium.
His campaign illustrates why data center expansion is a physical manifestation of our corrupted political system.
Because, look, who profits from banks and AI companies teaming up to build the largest data center in the world in a struggling rural community? The project will create some new construction jobs, but the vast majority of them will be temporary and gone once the build-out is over. According to a report by the nonprofit Innovation Ohio, one recent Ohio data center project received a state tax exemption worth $4.5 million to create 10 jobs. Temporary construction jobs are not where the money is.
The real money – hundreds of millions in profits made off that labor and our country’s electricity supply – will benefit the tech, energy, and financial executives who are already so obscenely rich that they can buy off politicians to get permission to pollute our drinking water and forever disrupt the entire labor market.
Major donors funding a pro-Ramaswamy super PAC stand to profit from AI data center expansion. According to FEC reports, V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims has raised roughly $41 million in total. Just look at the millions in contributions from tech and financial industry titans to the super PAC supporting Ramaswamy:
$20 million from Jeffrey Yass, co-founder of a giant Wall Street firm and part owner of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, and whose net worth is an estimated $64 billion.
$6 million from Ross Stevens, a hedge fund executive who advocates for bitcoin so passionately that he has called it “a human rights treasure.”
$5 million from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and first trillionaire, who owns multiple tech ventures.
$5 million from Ratmir Timashev, the founder and former CEO of a giant software company, whose net worth is an estimated $5.4 billion.
$1 million from Bill Ackman, the hedge fund executive whose net worth is an estimated $8 billion, and whose fund is heavily invested in AI companies – with as much as 39% of its holdings invested in AI as of 2025.
Companies with a direct financial stake in AI data center expansion in Ohio have also contributed to Ramswamy’s campaign. For example: The utility company American Electric Power has already submitted a pre-application for a 50-mile gas transmission line that would serve the Piketon data center, according to an in-depth report from Inside Climate News. The PAC associated with that same utility, The American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government, has made a direct contribution to Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign.
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy is personally heavily invested in the data center industry, according to a detailed report from Innovation Ohio. He holds investments in companies involved in the whole data center supply chain, from chip manufacturers like Nvidia (also reportedly involved in the Piketon data center), hardware suppliers, real estate developers, tech companies, and in the crypto industry. Strive Asset Management, the financial firm he co-founded and still owns a majority stake in, has an enormous amount of stock in Nvidia and Intel, whose businesses rely on data centers, and in bitcoin. Ramaswamy will personally profit, likely by the millions, if those businesses are able to grow because data centers are expanding.
As governor, Ramaswamy would have a direct conflict of interest between his financial holdings and his government position. Governors have outsized influence over data center expansion. As in many other states, Ohio lawmakers have introduced several bills that would regulate the data center industry. The next governor will decide whether to sign or veto any data center legislation, as well as oversee the Public Utilities Commission tasked with regulating utility companies and other state boards related to data centers.
The Democratic candidate for governor, Amy Acton, a physician from Youngstown, Ohio, supports a conditional moratorium on data centers, while the state assesses potential labor, cost, and environmental risks.
Unlike her famously corruptable opponent, Acton is refusing to accept corporate PAC money. When you’re not relying on Elon Musk or OpenAI or the local utility company’s PAC to fund your campaign, taking positions that those billionaire tycoons don’t like doesn’t come with the risk of losing your financial backers. Candidates not worried about their bank account have less of a bias when deciding whether they think we really need to spend enough electricity to power eight million homes to help OpenAI expand its business.
If elected officials push back on giant companies, maybe the tech and hedge fund executives won’t like them, but, given how people feel about data centers, there’s a good chance that many Americans will.
These data centers should be required to support social programs for the communities where they are being built. They will increase the costs for electricity and water, so they should have to help these communities.
If Japanese investors want then build it in Japan, not here.