SoftBank's SB Energy Pushes $50 Billion IPO to October as Debt Investors Demand Junk-Level Yields

Since Nscale filed for its own NYSE IPO targeting a $30 billion valuation on September 20, the AI infrastructure listing pipeline has run into a second, bigger roadblock: SoftBank's SB Energy.

SB Energy filed its S-1 with the SEC on September 1, seeking to list on Nasdaq under the ticker SBE and raise between $5 billion and $7 billion at a valuation north of $50 billion, according to Crypto Briefing. The company has now pushed that listing from September to mid-to-late October, with four people involved in deal marketing telling The New York Times that banks could not secure sufficient demand at the price range set by SB Energy and its advisers, as reported by BigGo Finance.

SB Energy generated $138.7 million to $139 million in revenue in the first half of 2026, according to both AI Weekly and Dealroom, while posting a net loss of $3.21 billion over the same period, per Crypto Briefing. Dealroom put the operating loss specifically at $356.9 million. The company has not brought a single data center online.

SB Energy's pitch rests on contracted backlog. Crypto Briefing and AI Weekly cite a figure near $439 billion; Dealroom reports $284.1 billion, noting that $357 billion of related revenue won't be recognized until 2034 or later. Either way, the company says fulfilling its 8.8 gigawatts of contracted capacity across Ohio and Texas will require more than $170 billion in capital expenditure, according to Dealroom and Crypto Briefing, funded mostly through debt.

That debt is proving hard to sell. The Financial Times, via Zetik, reported that a proposed $4.9 billion debt sale met weak demand, with investors indicating they'd want roughly a 10% yield, pricing that implies junk-grade risk for a SoftBank-backed venture. Investor concern centers partly on OpenAI and Anthropic signaling slower model development, per the Financial Times.

The OpenAI Dependency

OpenAI is both SB Energy's biggest selling point and its biggest exposure. The company anchored a 20-year lease on a 10-gigawatt Ohio campus with $5.5 billion in warrants, issued in January at $3.6 billion and up roughly $1.9 billion by June, according to The Next Web. AI Weekly reports SB Energy is 'substantially dependent' on OpenAI, which holds those warrants alongside 17 leases covering roughly 8 gigawatts of Ohio capacity.

OpenAI's own IPO timeline remains unsettled, and Dealroom reports the company is in early talks for a roughly $1.2 trillion private funding round instead. If OpenAI's listing slips further, SB Energy's revenue projections tied to that tenant carry more uncertainty, not less.

Nvidia is the other anchor. The Next Web reports Nvidia is buying an additional $1.5 billion of SB Energy shares at a 90% discount to the coming IPO price, bringing its total backing to $3 billion, while taking nonvoting shares rather than votes. Crypto Briefing separately cites Nvidia committing $1.5 billion plus guarantees up to $105 billion for the Ohio project; Dealroom puts Nvidia's guarantee for the initial phase at $67.9 billion. The figures vary by scope and source, but the pattern is consistent. Nvidia, the chipmaker whose processors create the demand SB Energy is selling, is also bankrolling the seller at a discount.

Not an Isolated Case

SB Energy isn't alone. Holtec, the small modular reactor developer that supplies power to data centers, indefinitely suspended its own IPO last week, citing uncertainty in data center development, according to BigGo Finance. Holtec had planned to raise $900 million at up to a $10 billion valuation and was originally set to begin trading on Nasdaq. Power company Aggreko is also slowing its listing process amid rising interest rates and broader economic uncertainty, per BigGo Finance.

Separately, Bloomberg reported that SoftBank has ended talks over a $50 billion purchase of data center firm Switch, according to Data Center Dynamics, citing financing and logistical hurdles. SoftBank is instead proceeding with a $4 billion acquisition of DigitalBridge, Switch's majority owner. Switch itself is reportedly weighing its own IPO at a valuation up to $60 billion.

Community opposition to new data centers, over power consumption, electricity rates, and environmental impact, is compounding the market's caution and has become a political flashpoint in several states, according to BigGo Finance.

Some bankers still see $50 billion as a reasonable valuation for SB Energy, and point to CoreWeave's post-IPO rebound as a precedent that AI infrastructure stocks can recover once they trade. CoreWeave remains, per Dealroom, the only third-party compute developer with a backlog approaching SB Energy's scale.

SoftBank has committed more than $60 billion to OpenAI, according to Zetik's summary of Financial Times reporting, and CEO Masayoshi Son has staked SoftBank's strategy on AI infrastructure dominance, including a $100 billion Stargate commitment alongside OpenAI and Oracle. Whether SB Energy can price its IPO in mid-to-late October, and at what valuation, will be the next concrete test of whether Wall Street still believes that bet.