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Techmeme surfaced CNBC’s September 1 report, “SB Energy IPO: AI data center play backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, OpenAI.” The underlying IPO filing describes a company whose present business is renewable power but whose valuation story depends on becoming a vast landlord for artificial intelligence. Its most revealing numbers are not the proposed share price, which remains blank, but the distance between what has been promised and what has been built.

SB Energy says it has approximately \$439 billion of contracted backlog across power and data centers. Yet none of its data-center capacity is operating. Nearly all of the data-center backlog stretches many years into the future, and nearly all of the signed capacity is intended for OpenAI. The IPO therefore offers public investors exposure to a tightly coupled infrastructure chain: OpenAI supplies the demand, SB Energy must construct the campuses, and Nvidia supplies chips, capital, and a limited guarantee that helps make part of the project financeable.

From solar developer to AI landlord

SB Energy began in 2019 as a power-infrastructure developer. It currently operates about 2.2 gigawatts of solar generation and battery storage and has more projects under construction or contract. In 2025, it acquired data-center construction and operations firm Studio 151, then repositioned itself as a “power-first” AI infrastructure company.

The division of labor is straightforward. SB Energy plans to provide land, power, fiber, water, building shells, cooling, and internal electrical and mechanical systems. Customers bring the racks and semiconductors. This avoids competing with cloud providers in compute services while placing SB Energy at the physical bottleneck underneath them.

The contracted data-center portfolio totals about 8.8 gigawatts of critical IT capacity. Only 0.8 gigawatts—the Cosmos campus for a SoftBank affiliate and two Milam County buildings for OpenAI—was under construction when the prospectus was filed. The remaining 8.0 gigawatts is the 17-building PORTS-Pike campus in Ohio, leased to OpenAI but not yet under construction. Its buildings are scheduled to become ready in phases from 2028 through 2032, subject to financing, permits, power delivery, construction, and tenant acceptance.

A backlog measured in decades

The \$439 billion headline needs careful handling. SB Energy defines backlog as estimated future revenue under binding contracts, not cash already collected or near-term sales. About \$430 billion comes from data centers, whose leases have a weighted average remaining term of 19.6 years. The filing expects only roughly \$1 billion of consolidated backlog to become revenue within 24 months, another \$12 billion in months 25–48, and approximately \$357 billion more than eight years from now.

Delivering that backlog will require an estimated \$178 billion of capital spending on contracted projects. SB Energy expects most of the money to come from project-level debt that has not yet been raised. The backlog estimate also excludes operating costs, maintenance, overhead, non-capitalized interest, taxes, cost overruns, delays, and defaults. It is best understood as the gross value of a long-duration construction plan, not a forecast of profit.

The historical financial statements underscore how early the transition is. In the first half of 2026, SB Energy recorded \$138.7 million of revenue, primarily from its power business, and a \$3.21 billion net loss. Most of that loss was not current cash burn: it included a \$2.57 billion non-cash increase in the value of an OpenAI warrant liability and \$589.5 million of stock-based compensation. The distinction matters, but so does the basic fact that the data-center segment had generated no operating revenue.

Customer, investor, and guarantor become one system

OpenAI occupies an extraordinary position. It is the tenant for the two Milam buildings and all 8.0 gigawatts at PORTS-Pike, as well as an equity investor and strategic partner. Based on the capacity table in the filing, OpenAI accounts for more than 99% of SB Energy’s signed data-center capacity; the only other current tenant is a SoftBank affiliate at the roughly 50-megawatt Cosmos campus. SB Energy explicitly warns that its revenue, financing, and development plans are substantially dependent on OpenAI’s willingness and ability to honor its leases.

OpenAI also holds 3,991,809 warrants with a nominal exercise price of \$0.01 per share. Their estimated fair value rose from \$3.65 billion when issued in January to \$5.5 billion at June 30, producing much of SB Energy’s reported first-half loss and promising dilution for public shareholders as additional tranches vest. SB Energy, in turn, has committed to buy at least \$50 million of OpenAI software through 2028. The tenant is simultaneously a supplier and a potential owner whose equity upside grows with the value created by its own leases.

Nvidia adds another layer. It has committed a total of \$3 billion through a prepaid forward contract and an IPO-linked private placement. It has also provided a residual-value guarantee capped at \$105 billion for the first 4.25 gigawatts at PORTS-Pike. That is not a blanket promise to fund the campus or cover every missed payment. It applies after specified OpenAI insolvency or uncured-default events, declines over the lease term, and gives Nvidia options to assume a lease, find another tenant, or direct a sale. Nvidia may choose—but is not obligated—to extend support to the remaining 3.78 gigawatts.

This interdependence is both the pitch and the risk. OpenAI gets enormous future capacity, Nvidia strengthens demand for its hardware and makes the first phase easier to finance, and SB Energy gains long leases and powerful backers. But the same relationships concentrate failure: weaker OpenAI demand or credit could impair leases, financing, Nvidia’s economics, and SB Energy’s valuation at once.

The IPO filing turns the AI infrastructure boom into a balance-sheet question. The decisive evidence will not be the size of the backlog or the fame of the partners. It will be whether SB Energy can raise project debt, obtain permits and power, finish campuses on schedule, and convert long-dated promises into rent without costs outrunning returns.