Oracle может заплатить $7 млрд гарантии за питание AI-дата-центра Lighthouse

Oracle in July 2026 disclosed in a sworn affidavit that connecting its Lighthouse Campus AI data center in Port Washington, Wisconsin to the power grid could require collateral of up to $7 billion — a demand from the local energy regulator. The company is building the roughly one-gigawatt campus together with data center operator Vantage and OpenAI, and the entire project is valued at approximately $15 billion.

Why Oracle is risking $7 billion

Oracle will have to post a multibillion-dollar guarantee for the local regulator to approve power supply to the construction site. According to TheNextWeb, the company disclosed the figure in a sworn affidavit — a legal document filed as part of the grid connection approval process. The guarantee functions as collateral: it protects the power system and other consumers in case the giant facility fails to reach its stated consumption level or the project falls through.

• Project — Lighthouse Campus, Port Washington, Wisconsin
• Partners — Oracle, data center operator Vantage, and OpenAI
• Capacity — nearly 1 gigawatt
• Total project cost — around $15 billion
• Possible power-supply guarantee — up to $7 billion (per Oracle's affidavit)

This site alone could require collateral of up to $7 billion under the power-supply guarantee, — the sworn affidavit from

Oracle states.

How much does the Lighthouse project cost

Building Lighthouse Campus will cost around $15 billion, and that is just the capital expenditure for the campus itself — not counting the potential energy guarantee. Nearly a gigawatt of capacity is comparable to the consumption of a major city: such volumes are needed to train and run OpenAI's models, for which Oracle serves as the infrastructure partner. Vantage is responsible for developing and operating the site, Oracle for cloud computing, and OpenAI for the end workload.

Why energy became the bottleneck

Energy has become the main constraint in the race for AI capacity — major players have the money for chips and construction, but kilowatts in the right place and volume aren't always available. Before power can be delivered to a gigawatt-scale campus, the operator must prove financial solvency to the regulator and post collateral so as not to shift the risk onto the rest of the grid's customers. Oracle's case shows that the bottleneck for data centers isn't the servers — it's substations, transmission lines, and energy regulators' requirements.

What this means

AI infrastructure runs up against the power grid, not the hardware: for the new generation of data centers, connecting to the energy system is becoming a separate multibillion-dollar project with its own collateral requirements and regulatory hurdles. The bigger the campus, the higher the cost of entry — even before the first server is switched on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Oracle building the Lighthouse data center?

The Lighthouse campus is being built in Port Washington, Wisconsin, USA. The project's partners are Oracle, data center operator Vantage, and OpenAI; the stated capacity is nearly one gigawatt.

How much does the project cost, and why is a $7 billion guarantee needed?

The campus itself is valued at around $15 billion. Separately from that amount, according to the affidavit, Oracle may need to post up to $7 billion in collateral to the local energy regulator — a guarantee for connecting the facility to the power grid.