Microsoft — Lordstown AI Campus (Stargate Phase 1)

The Lordstown AI Campus is a 600 MW planned data center facility in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, developed as part of the broader Stargate AI infrastructure initiative. The site is significant for its location: Lordstown is best known as the home of a General Motors assembly plant that closed in 2019, and the repurposing of former industrial land for AI infrastructure symbolizes the economic transition underway in the Rust Belt.

Lordstown was identified for the Stargate network because of Ohio’s robust high-voltage transmission grid, affordable electricity from FirstEnergy and American Electric Power, available industrial land with strong transportation access along the I-80 corridor, and state and county tax incentive programs targeting data center investment. The Mahoning Valley’s industrial power infrastructure — built for steel mills and automotive manufacturing — can support the extreme power density requirements of modern AI GPU clusters.

The facility sits within the broader Ohio AI data center corridor that also includes Microsoft’s Stargate campus in Mount Pleasant (south of Pittsburgh), Meta’s Project Prometheus in Columbus, and Meta’s nuclear campus at Oklo. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has made tech and AI investment attraction a centerpiece of economic development strategy, competing directly with Texas and Virginia for major data center projects. The 600 MW capacity at Lordstown, if fully realized, would make it one of the largest single data center sites in the state.

The project was announced as part of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son’s Stargate commitment and involves infrastructure partnerships with construction firms familiar with large-scale industrial projects in the region.

Note: Source tracking for this entry relies on early announcements and should be verified as the project progresses through permitting.