SoftBank to Operate $33 billion, 9.2 GW Gas-fired Plant; Largest in U.S. History

SoftBank’s subsidiary SB Energy will operate a new $33 billion, 9.2 gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant near in Ohio, the largest such facility in U.S. history.

Announced this month as part of a U.S.-Japan investment framework, the Portsmouth Powered Land Project will add needed power to the grid as demand from data centers skyrockets.

This is not just about power generation capacity. It’s about load growth velocity. Traditional grid planning assumed demand curves were slow and predictable. That model breaks when hyperscale data centers add multi-gigawatt loads in years, not decades.

PJM, the nation’s largest grid serving 67 million people including Ohio, has been struggling to secure enough capacity in light of today’s rapid demand growth.

At 9.2 GW, this single facility would provide enough energy for nearly half of Ohio, a scale that signals how AI infrastructure is now driving power plant construction, not the other way around.

This is part of the first round of investments from Japan’s $550 billion U.S. investment pledge, part of a trade deal to lower U.S. tariffs on Japanese imports to 15%.