Vantage Data Centers has topped out the second data center building at its Lighthouse campus in Port Washington, Wisconsin, marking another construction milestone at the large-scale facility being developed for OpenAI and Oracle as part of the Stargate initiative.

Structural Work Reaches New Milestone

The topping out of the second building signals the completion of its structural framework, following the earlier progress made at the campus since its first announcement in October.

Vantage shared the achievement on LinkedIn, crediting its employees, general contractors, trade partners, and community members for advancing the project.

The company noted that at peak construction, the development will employ approximately 5,000 workers on site. The Lighthouse campus is located north of Milwaukee in eastern Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The site spans 672 acres and was formerly earmarked for a potential chip fabrication development before Vantage took it over from powered land provider Cloverleaf Infrastructure.

Scale and Technical Specifications

At full build-out, the Lighthouse campus is planned to total 902 megawatts of capacity and 2.5 million square feet, equivalent to approximately 232,255 square meters, spread across four buildings.

The campus is scheduled to go live in 2028 and will use closed-loop liquid cooling technology to manage the thermal demands of the artificial intelligence workloads it is designed to support.

The scale of the project places it among the most significant data center developments currently underway in the United States.

The 902-megawatt figure reflects the growing power requirements associated with AI infrastructure, a trend that has driven a wave of large-scale campus announcements from hyperscale operators and their development partners across the country.

Economic Impact on Wisconsin

Vantage has outlined a substantial projected economic footprint for the state. Once the campus reaches completion, the company says it will support more than 1,000 permanent jobs directly tied to the facility's operations.

Beyond those direct positions, the company anticipates approximately 6,000 indirect jobs across Wisconsin stemming from the campus and its associated economic activity.

The construction phase alone is expected to generate significant temporary employment, with the peak workforce figure of around 5,000 workers representing a considerable injection of activity into the Port Washington area and the broader regional economy.

Stargate Connection and Tenant Background

The Lighthouse campus is being developed for OpenAI and Oracle as part of OpenAI's Stargate initiative.

Stargate is OpenAI's effort to build out a large-scale AI computing infrastructure in the United States, and the Wisconsin campus represents one of the physical embodiments of that program.

Oracle's involvement as a co-tenant places one of the enterprise technology sector's largest players alongside the AI firm at the Port Washington site. The land underlying the development was previously controlled by Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a powered land provider, before Vantage took over the site. Port Washington's location on Lake Michigan gives the campus access to geographic and environmental characteristics that factor into site selection decisions for large data center projects.

Vantage's Broader Portfolio

Vantage Data Centers currently operates 35 data center campuses spanning North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

Within the United States, the company has existing sites in Arizona, California, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington state.

Additional development projects are underway in Indiana, Ohio, and Nevada, meaning the Lighthouse campus in Wisconsin is one of several active construction programs the company is managing simultaneously.

The Wisconsin project stands out within that pipeline due to its size and the profile of its anchor tenants. A 902-megawatt campus developed for OpenAI under the Stargate program represents a qualitatively different undertaking than a standard enterprise or colocation facility, given the density of compute infrastructure required to support frontier AI training and inference workloads at that scale.

Construction Timeline and Next Steps

With the second building's structural framework now complete, construction will continue toward the 2028 target go-live date. The campus is planned to include four buildings in total, meaning significant additional work remains before the full site reaches operational status.

The use of closed-loop liquid cooling across the campus reflects engineering choices driven by the heat output of modern AI accelerator hardware, which generates far greater thermal loads than conventional server equipment.

Vantage has not disclosed a timeline for topping out the remaining two planned buildings, nor has it provided a phased opening schedule indicating which buildings might come online ahead of the full 2028 completion target.