SoftBank's SB Energy Heads for an IPO With No Data Center Running

The Nasdaq Composite closed at a record on Tuesday, its second in a row.

In the same market, a company building data centers for AI is looking for buyers at a valuation above $50 billion.

According to the New York Times on Sept. 21, there are not enough of them.

The Company Going Public

SB Energy is a solar power and data center developer based in California and majority-owned by SoftBank. It plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker SBE.

According to reports, the goal is to raise $5 billion to $7 billion at a valuation above $50 billion. Nvidia has committed to buy $1.5 billion of stock alongside the offering.

The last line is the company's own. The filing puts it plainly: "No data center capacity is currently in operation."

Where the Capacity Is, and When

Of SB Energy's 8.8 gigawatts of contracted data center capacity, only 0.8 gigawatts is under construction. The rest is the PORTS-Pike campus in Ohio. Its tenant is OpenAI, and construction has not started.

Capacity scheduled to be online by the end of 2028 is 9% of the total. The other 91% is five to six years away.

The filing states openly that most of the backlog rests on one campus, and that campus on one tenant. The risk section says the company is "substantially dependent on OpenAI."

What Is Being Sold Is Not an Income Stream

It is a construction schedule.

To see that, look at the spending table rather than the backlog. The company expects to spend about $178 billion on contracted projects over the next six years. Of that, $48 billion falls in the first 24 months.

A backlog shows revenue, not cost. The filing itself says both figures are estimates that do not account for risks such as cost overruns and delays.

Here leverage is carried by the company, not the shares. If the projects finish on time, a thin layer of equity owns a large rent stream. If they run late, that same thin layer takes the first loss.

Whom the Guarantee Protects

In August, Nvidia guaranteed up to $105 billion of OpenAI's lease obligations at PORTS-Pike. The figure is often cited as a safety net for the company.

So the risk investors are asking about most is not whether OpenAI pays. It is whether the buildings get finished on time and on budget.

Delayed or Not

On this point, two sources disagree.

The NYT, citing unnamed sources, reported that the IPO had slipped from September to mid-to-late October at the earliest. It said banks had not found enough demand at the target valuation. The next day, another source told Investing.com that preparations were on track and that October had been the plan all along.

The company has not commented. The one firm document is the SEC filing: the second amendment, dated Sept. 21, still leaves the price range blank. No investor roadshow starts without a range.

Holtec also markets its small nuclear reactors as a power source for data centers. That makes two energy and data center listings slowing within a week.

A Record Index, Cautious Buyers

The chart below shows the Nasdaq 100 over the past three months, counted back from today.

The AI stocks in that index are companies earning profits today. Of SB Energy's first-half revenue, $58.7 million came from customer contracts. The rest was the change in value of its power price hedges.

In the same half, the company lost $3.2 billion. Of that, $2.6 billion was a non-cash charge from the rising value of the one-cent stock warrants granted to OpenAI. The higher the company's value climbs, the larger that line grows.

Delayed or not, once a price range is published it will show what the valuation rests on: today's revenue, or a building due in 2031.

This article draws on SB Energy's second S-1 amendment filed with the SEC on Sept. 21, 2026 (capacity, backlog, capex, revenue and guarantee details); the New York Times report of Sept. 21 as summarized by Investing.com and Reuters; Investing.com's Sept. 22 sourced report; Nvidia's Aug. 17 announcement; and Bloomberg's report on Holtec. The raise size and valuation are as reported; the company has not yet set a price range.