Are you running this before every trade?

Before SB Energy has operated a single data center, it is asking public markets to value a business that may be worth more than $50 billion, underpinned by a $439 billion contracted backlog and a cast of backers who are simultaneously its investors, its tenants, and its guarantors. That structure deserves examination before the roadshow begins.

What SB Energy Actually Is

SB Energy describes itself as an integrated data center and power infrastructure company that develops, constructs, and plans to operate gigawatt-scale data center facilities while also developing, constructing, owning, and operating power generation assets. Founded in 2019, it pairs power generation with compute capacity to address AI’s energy constraints. The business it has built so far runs on legacy solar and battery storage assets. For the first half of 2026, the company generated about $138.7 million in revenue, mostly from that legacy energy business, while incurring net losses of roughly $3.21 billion.

“No data center capacity is currently in operation,” SB Energy stated in the prospectus. First data-center revenue is expected in the fourth quarter of 2026. The gap between ambition and reality is not small: the backlog is more than 3,100 times first-half revenue, giving investors huge visibility on paper but an equally huge execution gap on the ground.

The Circular Financing Question

Here is where the structure becomes worth interrogating. Nvidia has committed to invest $1.5 billion in a private placement, while OpenAI has been issued warrants that have been described in press reports as carrying an estimated value of about $5.5 billion. Nvidia has also disclosed that it has provided credit support for the land, power, and shell buildout tied to the initial 4.25 GW-IT at SB Energy’s PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio. SoftBank and OpenAI are described publicly as investors and counterparties tied to SB Energy’s data center buildout, and Nvidia is positioned as both an investor and a provider of credit support at the Ohio project.

Among the risk factors listed in the filing, SB Energy said it is “substantially dependent” on OpenAI as both a tenant and equity investor. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was an early personal investor in the company as well. “This concentration means that our near-term revenues, project-level financing arrangements, and development plans are significantly linked to OpenAI’s continued performance,” the filing states.

The honest description of this arrangement is that OpenAI and Nvidia are financially entangled with a company whose primary purpose is to build infrastructure OpenAI will lease and Nvidia will supply. Each party’s financial health underwrites the other’s. The Ohio campus concentrates contracted revenue with a single tenant: delays, disputes, or deterioration in OpenAI’s credit could have an outsized effect on the project. That is not a peripheral risk. It sits at the center of the entire investment case.

The Bull Case Has Substance Too

Dismissing SB Energy outright would be its own analytical error. The AI infrastructure deficit is real, and companies willing to sign 20-year leases on gigawatt-scale campuses are not easy to find. Its data-center contracts have been described as carrying a weighted average remaining term of 19.6 years. OpenAI has announced a 20-year lease for approximately 8.0 GW-IT at the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio. Long-duration demand at that scale is genuinely rare.

The Long-Term Verdict

The structural concern is not that these relationships are unusual for infrastructure development. They are not. Project finance has always relied on anchor tenants with strong credit. The concern is the degree of overlap: the same handful of entities are simultaneously writing the equity check, signing the lease, and supporting the financing. Reuters reported on May 26, 2026 that the company could seek a valuation of more than $50 billion. At that figure, with no operating cash flow, investors are paying for the credibility of the counterparty relationships rather than any demonstrated capacity to build and run gigawatt-scale facilities on time.

Disciplined long-term investors should want to see the first Ohio campus generating revenue before accepting a $50 billion price. The backlog is an extraordinary number. Whether it translates into compounding value depends on whether SB Energy can build at scale without the loop breaking, and right now, there is no operating evidence to answer that question either way.