Hope and concern swirl for Ohioans around 'world's largest datacenter'

Wed 26 Aug 2026 08.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 26 Aug 2026 16.37 EDT On a winding road tucked away behind forests in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio is where OpenAI, Nvidia and Japanese investors are set to spend $500bn on one of the largest artificial intelligence datacenters on the planet. Last March, the energy secretary, Chris Wright, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick and a host of Japanese and other dignitaries briefly descended on Piketon to enthusiastically break ground on a project to build 8GW worth of AI computing power. But locally, there's a different feeling: a mix of hope but also concern. "Personally, my emotions range between positive and skeptical," says Billy Spencer, who has been mayor of Piketon for the past 23 years, of the project. "There's not an organized opposition to it around here. There hasn't been that much talk. No one's come to council - I don't know that there's been one citizen who lives within the village of Piketon who has come and said: 'Mayor, what do you think about it?'"