World's Largest Data Center Piketon

“The Center of Our Super-Intelligence”: What Ohio Needs to Know About the SoftBank Piketon Deal

PORTS Technology Campus — SoftBank Group — SB Energy — U.S. Department of Energy — Pike County, Ohio

Ohio is not your server farm. 🌽👁️

Who Is Behind It

SoftBank Group — a Tokyo-headquartered investment conglomerate, not a data center operator. CEO Masayoshi Son says he was “born to realize ASI” — AI 10,000 times smarter than humans — and told the Piketon crowd: “This is the center of our super-intelligence.” A $1 trillion, 50-year bet, in his own words — on a foreign company with $27B and $32B back-to-back Vision Fund losses and a documented history of paying near-zero corporate tax in Japan.
The partners: SB Energy (SoftBank's energy arm) builds the 9.2-gigawatt gas plant. AEP Ohio builds the transmission. OpenAI is the reported anchor tenant — SoftBank is also one of OpenAI's biggest shareholders. Financing reportedly runs through Mizuho, JPMorgan, and MGX — an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund vehicle.
The land: 3,700 federal acres at the former Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant — built in the 1950s for the U.S. nuclear weapons program — leased, not sold, by the Department of Energy.

Ohio just learned Meta, Google, and Amazon each hold $600 million, 40-year sales tax exemptions on data center equipment — uncapped deals costing the state $1.6 billion in 2025 alone.
Has SoftBank applied for the same 40-year exemption? Nobody has answered. SB Energy does not appear on the state's published list of 18 exemption holders — but no one has confirmed or denied a pending or future deal.
At the groundbreaking, Pike County commissioners said the property tax (PILOT) agreement was still being negotiated — terms undisclosed. Ground was broken before the public knew what the county gave away.
Pending state legislation would actually give more generous breaks to projects that build their own power plant on a brownfield — exactly what SoftBank is doing.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick bragged the deal happened in “Trump time” — announced one month before shovels hit the ground.
No environmental impact assessment made public. No water-use plan disclosed. No public comment period announced — for the largest gas plant in the world next to the Ohio River.
The pattern is statewide: Ohio's siting board approved a Meta-linked gas plant in Wood County in roughly 90 days with no public hearing. Residents found out after construction began.

Two days before the announcement, DOE's own groundwater report confirmed TCE at 24,000 times the cleanup goal, uranium above drinking water standards, and radioactive technetium-99 in local creeks — on the same site now being leased.
Pike County's premature death rate (under age 74) is 107% higher than the national average (2021–2023, epidemiologist Joseph Mangano). A local middle school closed after enriched uranium and neptunium-237 were detected.
This community has been repeatedly excluded from federal Radiation Exposure Compensation — no recognition, no compensation — and is now being asked to host the next round of federal ambition on the same contaminated ground.

Data center advocates sell every project as “winning the AI race” against China — national security as the sales pitch. Look at who actually owns this one.
The same federal site hosts Centrus Energy's uranium enrichment — a National Nuclear Security Administration mission whose stated purpose is ending dependence on foreign state-linked enrichment. Yet next door, DOE is leasing nuclear-legacy defense land to a foreign conglomerate — with no disclosed CFIUS national security review.
SoftBank has a CFIUS history: Washington stripped its board control of Fortress and forced Huawei/ZTE equipment out of Sprint over espionage concerns before approving those deals.
And the money behind “America's” AI security: $33.3 billion from Japan's government trade pledge, plus SoftBank capital tied to Saudi and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds. Japan is an ally — but if national security is the argument for these projects, it should be an argument applied to their owners too.

Ohio First. Ohio Eyes Open. 👁️🌽

Read sourced facts at ohioeyesopen.com and decide for yourself.

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