SoftBank

SB Energy recorded a 66.4 per cent revenue jump in the first half of 2026, the SoftBank-backed 9984.T data center developer disclosed on Tuesday in paperwork for its U.S. IPO, as AI infrastructure companies seek to tap surging investor appetite.

The company reported a net loss of US$3.21 billion on revenue of $138.7 million for the six months ended June 30, compared with a net loss of $215.5 million on revenue of $83.3 million a year earlier.

Investors have shown interest in companies supporting the broader AI infrastructure ecosystem, as hyperscalers and technology firms pour billions of dollars into expanding data centers to meet soaring demand for computing.

AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave’s CRWV.O shares have more than doubled since their debut last year, while data center operator Switch has tapped banks for an IPO as soon as the fourth quarter, Reuters has reported.

“While 92 per cent of companies plan to increase AI spending over the next three years, just 1 per cent of business leaders classify their companies as mature on the AI deployment spectrum, indicating that even today’s adopters are early in their multi-year investment cycle,” SB Energy said in its filing.

AI infrastructure investment by the world’s largest hyperscalers is expected to exceed $1.3 trillion by 2027, according to S&P Global Ratings.

“SB Energy gives investors a great opportunity to take advantage of sector growth without having to try and pick AI winners and losers from the various leading hyperscalers,” said Samuel Kerr, global head of equity capital markets at Mergermarket.

Still, the listing will be a key test of demand as the AI infrastructure trade has come under renewed pressure over concerns about the sustainability of the spending boom.

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Nvidia has committed to invest $1.5 billion in a private placement at the IPO price, while OpenAI has been issued warrants worth roughly $5.5 billion, SB Energy reported in the prospectus.

OpenAI and SoftBank had earlier this year invested $500 million each in SB Energy as part of the Stargate initiative to build AI data centers. Private capital firm Ares Management ARES.N is also a long-standing investor in the company.

SB Energy, which has a backlog of roughly $439 billion, currently does not have any operational data centers and is substantially dependent on OpenAI, according to its filing.

“Investors have to be convinced that hundreds of billions of contracted demand can be turned into cash flow over the coming years,” said IPOX Research Associate Lukas Muehlbauer.

SoftBank and OpenAI are customers at three of its data center campuses through long-term data center leases, SB Energy said. Those lease payments are expected to account for a major portion of the company’s near-term data center revenue.

“OpenAI’s 20-year leases are reassuring from a contractual perspective, but they also stretch across an unusually long horizon for an industry evolving this quickly. Few people can say with much confidence what the AI landscape will look like even five or ten years from now,” Muehlbauer said.

Redwood City, California-based SB Energy in the filing signaled plans to broaden its customer base and pursue acquisitions to accelerate growth.

The company and OpenAI are highly dependent on Nvidia for providing the chips needed for the sprawling data center being developed in Ohio, according to the filing, referring to the massive campus SB Energy is developing for the ChatGPT maker.

A wave of multi-billion-dollar AI, cloud and chip deals in the past few months has sharpened the scrutiny around AI’s circular economy, where the biggest funders become the biggest customers.

The companies have said that the deals were not circular financing, but rather investments to accelerate the AI buildout.

Founded in 2019, SB Energy focuses on pairing ​power generation with data centers ⁠to help address AI’s growing energy constraints. The firm has 8.8 gigawatts of total data center capacity contracted or under construction.

SB Energy plans to sell new shares. Reuters had reported the company could seek a valuation of more than $50 billion in its IPO.

JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Mizuho are joint lead book-running managers. SB Energy will list on the Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the symbol “SBE.”

(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil and Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber, Pooja Desai and Sriraj Kalluvila)