OpenAI winds up on nearly every side of a data center developer's business

Every company in tech watches out for OpenAI. SB Energy can't look away.

The data center developer filed its prospectus to go public on Monday, and it's uniquely intertwined with the AI lab behind ChatGPT, according to figures from the new filing.

Everywhere SB Energy turns, there's OpenAI: leasing data center capacity, owning billions of dollars in warrants, even locking in an OpenAI software deal through 2028. OpenAI, should it get a 5% ownership stake in SB Energy, will also get to pick a member of the company's board.

SB Energy's decision to go public signals the incredible expense in building new data centers and the rapacious demand for compute that OpenAI and its peers have generated over the last few years.

SB Energy is building its first two data center sites, both in Texas. One will be allotted to OpenAI, the other to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, which owns more than half of SB Energy. The developer has also planning to build a giant new data center in Southern Ohio, with help from OpenAI and Nvidia. That data center site, at a planned 8 gigawatts of capacity, is set to be among the world's largest and serve OpenAI.

In the filing, the developer warns about the depth of its relationship with OpenAI, which has confidentially filed its own initial public offering prospectus and is expected to go public next year.