SoftBank Handed OpenAI a $5.5 Billion Stake to Lock In a Data Center

To land OpenAI as an anchor tenant, SoftBank's data-center arm gave it something more valuable than a discount. SB Energy handed OpenAI warrants now worth about 5.5 billion dollars, a stake in the developer itself, in exchange for filling a planned campus in southern Ohio. The arrangement, reported by The Wall Street Journal, surfaced as SB Energy prepares an initial public offering that could raise between 5 and 7 billion dollars.

The mechanics are worth slowing down on. A warrant is a right to buy shares at a set price, so the grant effectively gives OpenAI equity in its own landlord. The warrants were first awarded in January, valued then at about 3.6 billion dollars, and had climbed to roughly 5.5 billion by the end of June as SB Energy's own worth rose. OpenAI, for its part, put 500 million dollars into SB Energy earlier this year, and after the listing is expected to hold a single-digit percentage of the company.

Eight gigawatts and one customer

In return, OpenAI signed 17 leases covering about eight gigawatts of computing capacity at the Ohio site, part of the sprawling Stargate build-out it is pursuing with SoftBank and others. Eight gigawatts is an enormous figure, comparable to the output of several large power stations, and it explains why a developer would give away equity to secure it. Empty capacity is a liability. A signed anchor tenant turns a construction project into a financeable asset.

The risk sits on the other side of the ledger. SB Energy has acknowledged that it remains substantially dependent on OpenAI, which is a delicate thing to disclose in the run-up to an IPO. Investors buying into the listing are, to a large degree, buying into OpenAI's ability to keep paying for power it has committed to years in advance. If OpenAI's own economics wobble, the tenant risk flows straight back to SB Energy's shareholders.

A pattern, not a one-off

This is the second time in recent weeks that SoftBank's machinery for funding OpenAI has come into view. The group has also been tapping Japanese retail savers through a record bond sale to underwrite the same ambitions. The through-line is that the money and the megawatts are increasingly bound together, with power developers taking equity positions to hedge the enormous bets they are placing on AI demand. Others are trying different tricks to make the sums work, from start-ups that flex data-center load off the grid to sovereign-scale financing. The warrants tell you how tightly one company's fortunes are now stitched into the infrastructure being built to serve it.