CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Volato Group, Inc. announced Thursday it is changing its corporate name to SOAR AI, Inc., unveiling a new logo, visual identity, and corporate website as the company scales its artificial intelligence infrastructure business.
The rebrand, announced in a company release, follows Volato’s recently completed merger with Alignment Engine Inc., the company building an AI data center campus at Chillicothe’s former paper mill. SOAR stands for “Sovereign AI Resources,” according to the company. The new corporate website is SOARAI.com.
The company’s stock will continue to trade under the ticker SOAR on the NYSE American, and its CUSIP number is not expected to change. Stockholders need to take no action, the company said. The name change is expected to take effect Oct. 19, with trading under the new name beginning Oct. 20, subject to regulatory and exchange requirements. The rebrand will not affect the company’s corporate existence or the rights of its security holders.
Chief Executive Officer Chris Ensey said the new identity “better represents the company we are building today and where we are going,” describing a strategy of giving customers greater control over their AI infrastructure while working responsibly with host communities.
The new website describes SOAR AI as a “neocloud and data center builder and operator” focused on what it calls sovereign and sustainable AI, offering dedicated and shared AI computing capacity as well as on-premises and edge systems. The site says the company develops “community-integrated” campuses built around skilled jobs, industrial renewal and efficient use of local resources, and touts a proprietary NeuralSync data-movement technology.
The company said it is actively constructing its AI infrastructure campus in Ohio, with about $1.2 billion in contracted customer demand. In September, the company signed a master services agreement and two four-year take-or-pay orders with a large AI customer totaling about $1.17 billion, including contractual prepayments, according to the announcement. The first deployment will use AMD MI355X GPUs with a contractual start date of Dec. 31, 2026; the second will use AMD MI455X GPUs starting June 30, 2027. Both will be dedicated single-tenant GPU clusters.
The company also said it is evaluating additional AI infrastructure and data center locations in the United States and internationally as part of its longer-term growth strategy.
What the company has told investors about the Ohio campus goes well beyond the project described at a Sept. 8 public meeting in Chillicothe, where Alignment Engine presented its initial development as a roughly 6.5-acre operation combining a “data hall” with electronics manufacturing inside the former mill complex.
In merger documents and investor materials, the company says the Ohio campus already has 154 megawatts of power available with a pathway to 480 megawatts, and that power, water, and wastewater-treatment infrastructure are operational. “We aren’t starting with a greenfield site and a plan to find power,” Ensey said in the company’s merger announcement.
The company’s hiring materials describe 240 full-time positions across 73 roles at what it calls the Chillicothe Advanced Industrial Campus — including a director of critical facilities operations, utility and central energy plant operators, critical-facilities electricians and a data center operations manager overseeing what the company calls “one of the largest GPU deployments in the Midwest.”
Property records show the former mill site has been divided among separate owners: in August, U.S. Paper Mill LLC transferred a parcel of about 45 acres and 2.2 million square feet of improvements to Critical Infrastructure I, DST, a trust sponsored by Las Vegas-based CAI Investments, for $76.525 million, with U.S. Paper Mill remaining as tenant under a 25-year lease. The mill’s power-generation plant was transferred to a separately created company, U.S. Power and Cattle.
In August, Chillicothe City Council passed a 60-day moratorium on data center development, then reversed course Sept. 14 after a February zoning-verification letter surfaced showing city officials had previously told U.S. Paper Mill a data center appeared compatible with the property’s industrial zoning. Council members have discussed potential future restrictions, including a 100-megawatt threshold.
