SB Energy Considers Waiting Until December or Later for an IPO

SB Energy, the SoftBank Group–controlled developer of a massive planned Ohio data center project for OpenAI, is considering going public in December or possibly waiting until next year, according to people familiar with the discussions.

That is a later timeline than previously expected. The data center developer was aiming to go public as soon as September, The Information reported in August. But since then, the public market has soured on initial public offerings from data center and AI cloud companies. Australian cloud firm Firmus yanked its IPO plans earlier this month, and others are considering delaying their offerings.

SB Energy leaders are closely watching Anthropic’s blockbuster IPO, which is expected next month before the Thanksgiving holiday, said the people. SB Energy could try to go public as soon as December if Anthropic’s public listing trades well.

SB Energy made its IPO prospectus public on September 2 and filed an amended one on September 21. Companies usually start their formal marketing with IPO investors, known as an IPO road show, two weeks after they file publicly with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though they can choose to wait longer—particularly when markets are volatile or unpredictable.

The company’s IPO is one of several expected offerings aiming to tap public investors’ cash to feed the physical expansion necessary to run and train AI. SB Energy had been aiming to raise $5 billion to $7 billion to help finance the Ohio data center that OpenAI plans to lease. The data center is set to be backed with a $105 billion credit guarantee from Nvidia and to use Nvidia chips.

If it puts off its IPO for longer, SB Energy could continue to expand using the cash it’s already raised. That’s thanks in part to a $1.5 billion investment in SB Energy by Nvidia in mid-August when the two companies and OpenAI signed the data center deal. In addition, SB Energy had $1.2 billion of cash and cash equivalents as of June 30.

SB Energy could also tap private investors, including two of its shareholders, SoftBank and Nvidia, which are already big backers. That’s a path Firmus, which is in talks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from Nvidia in a private round, is also pursuing.

Still, going public would make it easier for SB Energy to raise the more than $100 billion it needs to achieve its ambitious plans to build a data center in Ohio that could generate 8.5 gigawatts of compute and hold some $600 billion in Nvidia hardware. The public offering would pave the wave for cheaper debt sales to finance that project.

A representative for SB Energy declined to comment.

Valuation Concerns

SB Energy’s revenue is now largely dependent on the sale of electricity to power companies. Its eventual public offering will rely on investor confidence that its plans to expand its revenue will come to fruition.

Bankers have floated a valuation around $60 billion, but IPO investors have found that hard to stomach, The Information reported last month. That’s because SB Energy is asking investors for a valuation based mostly on future revenue that depends on whether its massive data center projects get built.

The Ohio data center constitutes all of the firm’s $430 billion in contracted data center revenue. SB Energy aims to have the facility come online in phases, beginning in 2028, and the revenue would be spread over 15 year to 20 year lease terms starting when each building comes online. The company reported $139 million in revenue in the first half of 2026; based on an annualized version of that figure, a $60 billion valuation would amount to a revenue multiple of more than 200.

SB Energy is weighing its IPO timing as a slew of data center developers are also aiming to go public soon in the U.S.

Nscale, which develops data centers and rents out Nvidia’s AI chips, is trying to stick with a planned fall listing at a valuation of around $30 billion, even after some prospective investors voiced skepticism about the valuation, said people familiar with the matter. It’s in talks with Anthropic about a cloud computing deal worth $45 billion, which could help support that valuation, said one of the people.

Some of those other developers are reconsidering their options after yields on some CoreWeave bonds, which have become a proxy for investors’ perception of the AI boom’s risks, spiked and share prices of publicly traded neoclouds sank over the past weeks.

DayOne Data Centers, a Singapore-based data center operator, is now weighing whether it should push back its offering or raise less money in the IPO, according to Bloomberg. (DayOne is the developer for one of Firmus’ biggest sites in Indonesia, a facility that’s set to be filled with more than 170,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI server chips.)

Blackstone-backed data center operator AirTrunk recently postponed the listing of a real estate investment trust on the Singapore Exchange that sought to raise about $1.5 billion.