Why SoftBank Is Rushing SB Energy to the Public Markets

People used to complain that some private tech companies waited too long to go public. Thanks to the AI boom, now we’ve got tech companies going public with hardly any operating business at all. The latest example of that is SB Energy, a SoftBank-controlled solar and battery power firm that filed to go public on Tuesday. 

SB Energy proudly proclaims, in big text early on in its IPO filing, that it is “Building World-Class Data Center and Power Infrastructure.” The key word there is “Building.” In much smaller print, nestled within vast reams of text extolling the virtues of its approach to AI data centers, is this phrase: “No data center capacity is currently in operation.” The only revenue SB Energy currently generates—a total of $213.5 million last year—came from solar and battery power generation projects. And assuming it builds the data centers it is planning over the next couple of years, SB Energy will only have one outside customer—OpenAI.