A version of this story was published in the AI-Energy Nexus newsletter on September 2, 2026. Subscribe to get pieces like this — plus expert analysis, original reporting, and curated resources — in your inbox every Wednesday.
I didn’t expect to find myself digging into SB Energy’s data center plans for the second week running, but here we are.
Earlier this week, following a year of investments from the likes of Nvidia and OpenAI, the Softbank subsidiary filed for an initial public offering with the SEC, reportedly aiming to raise between $5 billion and $7 billion. The filing describes SB Energy as an “integrated data center and power infrastructure company.”
It’s not surprising, but it’s worth highlighting what a dramatic shift in business strategy this is. SB Energy was founded in 2019 as a renewables developer and only officially began pivoting towards AI infrastructure in 2025, when it bought Studio 151, a data center EPC and operations firm.
Just a year later, the company is the developer behind one of the country’s largest planned data centers. The PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, which we’ve covered in this newsletter previously, will be backed by 10 gigawatts of power infrastructure, almost all of which will be new fossil gas generation, and will be built on federal land. As we covered last week, it’s not going to come online before 2028 at the very soonest, but would be one of the largest data center campuses in the world, and already has secured a tenant in OpenAI.
For a company that has no data center, digital infrastructure, or gas generation capacity currently in operation, the project would be quite a feat. According to the S-1 filing SB Energy’s operational assets as of June 2026 consisted of approximately 2.2 GW of solar power and BESS projects in California and Texas. And that’s it: no data center or gas infrastructure at all.
“No data center capacity is currently in operation,” the filing reads, noting that its first two data center projects are under construction, while the PORTS-Pike project is not. “There can be no assurance that these projects or any other project will be completed on the anticipated timeline or at all.”
The filing shows $138.7 million of revenue for the first half of 2026 against $439 billion of backlog, $430 billion of which comes from data centers, which are not expected to produce any revenue for the company until at least the end of the year. The company also flags long lead times for power equipment and spreading opposition to data centers as factors potentially hindering its future growth.
SB Energy is not the first company to ride the AI infrastructure boom to an IPO that might seem premature, and it surely won’t be the last. Fermi America, the Texas company co-founded by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, which filed for an IPO in September 2025 with no revenue and no customers at all — and which I wrote about with much skepticism at the time — is the most glaring example. AI infrastructure company CoreWeave also went public in 2025, raising $1.5 billion. Considering it had both revenue and customers, its profile was stronger than Fermi’s and its stock price has since more than doubled.
And it’s certainly not the first outlandish bet by a company backed by SoftBank, which is known for its enormous risk appetite.
Even so, SB Energy’s decision to tackle a large, complicated infrastructure project such as PORTS-Pike with limited operating history, and under the scrutiny of the public market, is remarkable.
While the question of whether the company will be able to pull it off at all is certainly my biggest question, it’s not the only one emerging from the filing.
I’m especially interested in the deliberate vagueness surrounding the development of the 9.2-GW gas power plant, which will be built on land adjacent to the data center campus and will be owned by the U.S. government. While the S-1 filing makes it clear that SB Energy intends to develop and own the data center site itself, it’s more cautious when it comes to the gas generation.
“We are developing and will own and operate the data center site, but we do not expect to own or operate the gas-fired generation facilities,” the filing says, adding that they’re being “developed by an affiliate of SoftBank that is not our subsidiary,” and that they have not been financed, constructed, or contracted yet, and are subject to permits and approvals “which are the responsibility of the developer and owner of such facilities.”
While the company does say it is investing in the “initial development of large-scale gas-fired power generation facilities to supply our data centers,” the filing does not link the investments to the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus at all.
The distancing is interesting, especially since the gas plant’s success is key to the success of the campus as a whole. The alternative of having PJM supply the full load seems unlikely, to say the least, given how capacity-constrained that market already is.
