Key points
- Japanese investors get up to $500 million of stock
- SoftBank may seek a $50 billion valuation
- Nvidia has committed $3 billion to the deal
- No data center capacity is operating yet
SB Energy, the SoftBank Group-owned developer behind large U.S. data-center and power projects, plans to sell up to $500 million of new shares to Japanese investors alongside its U.S. IPO. Reuters reported Tuesday that the company would use the money for general corporate purposes, including its data-center, power-generation and infrastructure buildout.
Reuters has reported that SoftBank may seek a valuation of as much as $50 billion, though SB Energy has not set the size, price or share count for the U.S. offering. SoftBank shares closed up 8.1% in Tokyo on Tuesday at 6,314 yen, after falling more than 11% on Monday. OpenAI separately ruled out a 2026 listing that day.
What SB Energy is selling
SB Energy filed its Form S-1 on September 1 and has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Nasdaq Texas under the ticker SBE. J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Mizuho are joint lead bookrunners. The company is targeting $5 billion to $7 billion from the offering, according to reports on the filing; the S-1 itself sets no share count or price range.
The filing puts contracted backlog at $439 billion, about $430 billion of it from data centers and about $10 billion from power, against first-half 2026 revenue of $138.7 million. About $1 billion of that backlog is expected to convert to revenue over the next 24 months, and about $357 billion sits beyond year eight, on data center contracts averaging 19.6 years. SB Energy has 8.8 GW of data-center capacity under construction, contracted or under exclusivity in Texas and Ohio, which the prospectus splits into 0.8 GW under construction and 8.0 GW contracted or under exclusivity. It has 5.5 GW of power projects contracted, under construction or operating.
None of the data center capacity is running. The filing states that no data center capacity is currently in operation, with the first two projects under construction. The largest, the PORTS-Pike campus in Pike County, Ohio, is planned to reach 9 to 10 GW at full buildout, more than the entire 8.8 GW now in the contracted portfolio. Its first capacity is not expected online before 2028, and OpenAI has already signed as a tenant. Nvidia is backing OpenAI's lease at that site.
Who is putting money in
Nvidia (NVDA) has committed $3 billion, split between a private placement of about $1.5 billion at the IPO price and a prepaid forward contract. SoftBank and OpenAI have each committed $500 million, and Ares Management $800 million. OpenAI also holds warrants in SB Energy worth about $5.5 billion.
OpenAI is a tenant, an investor and a warrant holder in the same company. SB Energy's filing describes the business as substantially dependent on OpenAI, and says SoftBank and OpenAI are customers at three campuses under long-term leases.
The Japanese tranche has a recent precedent. Japanese investors took $2.2 billion of SpaceX (SPCX) stock in its June listing, the largest IPO on record. SB Energy is also planning a retail offering to UK investors through a Marex platform.
