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Brookfield and NextEra plan $100B, 1.8GW AI campus at DOE's Paducah uranium site. Key points * Brookfield and NextEra Energy plan a $100 billion AI campus at the DOE's former Paducah uranium enrichment site, targeting 1.8 GW of compute capacity by 2032 [[1]] * NextEra will build up to 2 GW of natural gas-fired generation and 2.6 GW of battery storage on-site, with excess power delivered to the regional grid [[2]] * Operations are expected to begin in 2028, with full buildout completed by 2032; the project requires Kentucky Public Service Commission approval [[3]] * The campus is projected to create approximately 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent positions [[2]] * DOE selected Brookfield following a November 2025 Request for Offers process for the site, which closed as a uranium enrichment facility in 2013 [[1]] Brookfield and NextEra Energy will develop a $100 billion AI data center campus at the U.S. Department of Energy's former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky, the DOE announced on July 29. The project targets more than 1.2 GW of initial AI computing capacity, scaling to 1.8 GW by 2032 [[1]] [[2]]. NextEra, the largest U.S. utility by market capitalization, will build up to 2 GW of dedicated natural gas-fired generation and 2.6 GW of battery energy storage capacity at the site, a "bring-your-own-power" model that keeps the campus largely independent of the regional grid. Excess generation will be delivered to local utilities [[2]]. The DOE selected Brookfield following a Request for Offers process launched in November 2025. The project remains subject to negotiation of definitive agreements and approval by the Kentucky Public Service Commission. Operations are expected to begin in 2028, with full buildout completed by 2032 [[1]] [[3]]. Discover more Business & Corporate Law Stock market forecasts AI infrastructure solutions The site. The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant was constructed in the 1950s to produce enriched uranium and ceased enrichment operations in 2013. The 3,556-acre federal site in McCracken County, Kentucky, retains significant legacy infrastructure - including high-voltage transmission capacity, water access, fiber connectivity, and available land - that DOE officials say can accelerate development timelines [[1]] [[2]]. The campus is part of DOE's broader American Energy Hubs initiative, which seeks to repurpose underutilized federal sites for energy and compute infrastructure. A similar effort produced a nearly 10 GW data center announcement in Ohio earlier in 2026 [[3]]. Over 40,000 cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride remain on-site and will continue to be managed alongside the new development. DOE Assistant Secretary Tim Walsh said the project ensures "federal land will be put to productive use for Americans through affordable energy and AI innovation" [[1]]. Power & storage architecture. The project's power stack is among the largest dedicated generation buildouts announced for a single data center campus in the U.S. NextEra will develop up to 2 GW of new natural gas-fired generation paired with up to 2.6 GW of battery energy storage, for a combined 4.6 GW of dedicated capacity [[2]] [[4]]. The generation and storage resources will exceed the campus's own demand. Surplus power will be delivered to the regional grid through local utility partners - Big Rivers Electric Power Corporation, Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative, and Paducah Power System - a structure DOE says will lower electricity costs for surrounding ratepayers [[1]] [[2]]. The power service agreement requires approval from the Kentucky Public Service Commission, a process that will run in parallel with negotiations over definitive project agreements [[1]]. Discover more Health Foundations & Medical Research Partners and roles. Brookfield will own and operate the data center campus. The Canadian asset manager has been rapidly expanding its data center footprint globally, including through its Brookfield Infrastructure Partners vehicle and its 2024 acquisition of Data4 in Europe [[3]] [[4]]. NextEra Energy, which operates Florida Power & Light and is the world's largest generator of wind and solar energy, is providing the dedicated generation and storage infrastructure. The company has been increasingly positioning itself as a power supplier to hyperscale data center operators [[4]]. Local utility partners Big Rivers Electric Power Corporation and Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative will handle wholesale and retail electric service, respectively, while Paducah Power System provides community-level coordination. The coalition is branded as the Paducah American Energy Hub [[1]] [[2]]. Economic impact and timeline. The project is expected to generate approximately 8,000 construction jobs during the buildout phase and roughly 600 permanent positions once operational, according to the DOE announcement. At $100 billion, it would represent one of the largest single private investments in Kentucky's history [[1]] [[2]]. Construction completion is targeted for 2031, with the full 1.8 GW campus operational by 2032. Initial operations are expected to begin in 2028, though the project's status remains conditional on finalizing definitive agreements and securing regulatory approvals [[1]] [[3]]. The announcement adds to a growing pipeline of mega-scale AI infrastructure projects on federal land. The Paducah campus's co-located generation model - where power plants are built specifically for the data center and sited on the same property - represents a departure from the grid-connected approach used at most existing hyperscale campuses [[2]] [[4]]. Companies mentioned. 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CyrusOne names John Hatem CEO as Eric Schwartz steps down. Data center operator CyrusOne has named John Hatem, a nearly 15-year company veteran, as its new chief executive, succeeding Eric Schwartz as the company positions itself for continued AI-driven infrastructure growth. CyrusOne named John Hatem as its new Chief Executive Officer effective immediately, according to a July 30 press release from the company. Hatem succeeds Eric Schwartz, who is stepping down from the CEO role but will remain involved to assist with the leadership transition. Hatem has been with CyrusOne for nearly 15 years, having joined the company in 2011. He most recently served as President, a role in which he oversaw global sales, procurement, and the company's U.S. design, engineering and construction functions, giving him direct oversight of how CyrusOne designs, builds and delivers data center capacity. In the announcement, representatives of CyrusOne's ownership group, KKR partner Waldemar Szlezak and Global Infrastructure Partners' Will Brilliant, characterized Hatem as central to the company's culture and operations over his tenure. Schwartz, who led CyrusOne for roughly four years, said he was confident in Hatem's ability to lead the company going forward; the company credited Schwartz's tenure with record revenue growth and profitability. CyrusOne is privately held, backed by investment firms KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners, and operates data centers serving hyperscale cloud providers and enterprise customers. The leadership change comes as data center operators across the industry compete to deliver capacity fast enough to meet AI-driven demand for compute infrastructure, a dynamic that has driven a wave of new development and financing activity across the sector this year. The company's announcement framed Hatem's promotion as a move to accelerate its global digital infrastructure strategy, emphasizing his operational background in the technical, capacity-delivery side of the business as an asset heading into a period of continued expansion. CyrusOne did not disclose specific expansion targets or financial details alongside the leadership announcement. The move adds to a wave of major infrastructure investment CyrusOne's data center peers have announced this year, including Brookfield and NextEra Energy's $100 billion AI data center campus in Kentucky and Meta and BlackRock's $14 billion venture for a Texas data center campus, underscoring how aggressively capitalized the sector has become as operators race to secure power and land for AI infrastructure. What it means: The leadership transition itself is a verified company announcement. CyrusOne's framing of Hatem's operational background as the right fit for the company's next phase reflects the company's own stated rationale, not an independently verified prediction of how the transition will affect its competitive position in a data center market where capacity delivery speed has become a central point of competition among operators.

Federal government to turn a Kentucky uranium plant into an AI data center and gas power complex. The U.S. Department of Energy is harnessing the artificial intelligence boom in its bid to convert another Cold War-era uranium enrichment site. * AP * 1 hr ago PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - The U.S. Department of Energy is harnessing the artificial intelligence boom in its bid to convert another Cold War-era uranium enrichment site, tapping private equity to fund a $100 billion data center complex that will include its own new natural gas and battery storage power plant in Kentucky. The department selected investment firm Brookfield Asset Management to develop and operate the data center at the government-owned Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. In March, the department announced a similar project at its Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio. Both are undergoing extensive cleanup, decontamination and decommissioning after decades of fueling the nation's nuclear weapons and power plants. The project is in line with the Trump administration's efforts to make artificial intelligence superiority over China a top national security and economic priority. The federal government is transforming former DOE sites into "engines of innovation and economic growth" to "ensure the United States wins the A.I. race," Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement Wednesday. "There will be a lot of new natural gas power plants, a large data center, thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars of investment in rural western Kentucky," Wright said on the Fox News show "Fox & Friends." Earlier in July, the Department of Energy said it had picked engineering contractor Amentum to negotiate a lease to develop an AI data center and on-site power plant at South Carolina's Savannah River Site, a massive complex where the federal government once produced materials used in nuclear weapons, primarily tritium and plutonium-239. Real estate, energy and data center services are cornerstones in the investment portfolio of New York-headquartered Brookfield, which reports that it has more than $1 trillion in assets under management. Other partners in the Paducah projects are power generation and transmission giant NextEra Energy and local utilities. Florida-based NextEra Energy will build and own the power plant, which is to include 2 gigawatts of natural gas-fired generation, upgrades to transmission networks and 2.6 gigawatts of battery energy storage to support a new 1.8 gigawatt AI data center campus, the department said. A single gigawatt, according to a general industry standard for utilities, can power about 750,000 homes. A power service agreement must be approved by state utility regulators, and excess electricity would be delivered to the regional grid. Construction was expected to be complete in 2031, the department said. The public-private partnership is designed to continue the environmental cleanup at the roughly 3,550-acre Paducah plant site, which was on a list of 16 federal sites released last year as locations where the department could invite technology companies to build data management and storage capacity. It shut down in 2013 and the gaseous diffusion process to enrich uranium is considered obsolete. The department has projected that cleanup at the Paducah site would be completed in 2065 at a cost of about $17 billion, including demolishing buildings, disassembling uranium converters, removing refrigerant and treating a large plume of groundwater contamination.