Firm developing Portsmouth site data center posts $7B loss

Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group, whose subsidiary SB Energy is developing what the Department of Energy calls "the world's largest artificial intelligence data center" at the Portsmouth, Ohio, nuclear cleanup site, has posted a net quarterly loss of approximately $7 billion.

The PORTS Technology Campus (also known as the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus), which the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management announced in March, is slated to be home to a 10-GW AI data center developed through a partnership between SB Energy and OpenAI, with Nvidia providing computing infrastructure for the facility. According to the November 10 episode of DOE-EM's EnergyCast podcast, the campus also will host the largest energy generation project in the United States. SB Energy has pledged to build 10 GW of new power generation at the site to support the data center, including 9.2 GW of power from natural gas-powered turbines.

SoftBank incurred its $7 billion quarterly loss between July and September. The Financial Times reported the news on November 10, saying that according to sources, $3.7 billion of the loss was attributable to nonrefundable down payments made on gas turbine equipment for the PORTS Technology Campus.

SoftBank's announcement came one week after the November midterm elections in the United States, in which voters demonstrated opposition to data centers in a total of 44 out of 45 state- and local-level measures tallied as of this writing. The announcement also follows news of controversies around former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who resigned from his position on November 12.

Reuters reports that the development timeline for the PORTS Technology Campus has not changed. The campus is a covered project under FAST-41 that qualifies for expedited permitting and licensing reviews; an environmental review and licensing for the project are expected to be completed by January 29, 2027.

Developing a legacy cleanup site: The Portsmouth site previously hosted the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which began enriching uranium for nuclear weapons in 1956. Environmental remediation of the site started in 1989, though enrichment continued there until 2001. In 2011, the DOE took ownership of the site and proceeded with decontamination and decommissioning efforts.

Currently, DOE-EM is touting the site as a soon-to-be-revitalized center for industry as part of its American Energy Hub initiative. The initiative, announced in March 2026, promotes the redevelopment and reuse of DOE-EM-managed nuclear cleanup sites-including the Paducah site in Kentucky, the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, and the Hanford site in Washington, as well as Portsmouth-for new projects in the fields of manufacturing, energy production, and advanced computing.

Among the advantages that these locations offer is access to infrastructure. The November 10 EnergyCast notes that to support the PORTS Technology Campus, in addition to more than $30 billion to build gas power generation at the site, more than $5 billion will be spent to construct new electrical transmission capacity on top of the grid that previously existed to serve the gaseous diffusion plant. (An informational website for the campus confirms that both project investments will be funded by SB Energy.)

DOE-EM has stated that investment in the PORTS Technology Campus, along with investment in other American Energy Hub sites, is expected to create jobs. It estimates that development of the PORTS Technology Campus alone will generate 10,000 construction jobs as well as 2,000 permanent jobs related to the operation and maintenance of the campus facilities, including the data center.

Data center sentiment: Although the PORTS Technology Campus, which is being developed on federally leased land, was not on any ballot for the November 3 midterm elections, Ohio still emerged as a site of data center contention.

According to Ballotpedia, in response to local-level ballot questions (at the city, village, county, or township level), Ohio voters approved eight measures banning data centers operating at or above a certain power level, three measures banning any new data center construction, two measures instituting zoning regulations, one measure requiring financial guarantees from data center developers, and two measures requiring voter approval of data center construction. Voters in Wilmington also voted down four measures that would have allowed residential land to be rezoned for industrial use. No measures supporting data center development in Ohio passed.

While some hyperscalers are considering energy sources such as natural gas to power their data center projects, as SB Energy has for the PORTS Technology Campus, others have looked to nuclear energy as a possible source of power, as noted in our Nuclear Newswire postelection write-up. The effects of recent developments regarding data centers on the nuclear energy industry remain to be seen.