SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attend an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo, Japan Feb. 3, 2025.
Kim Kyung-Hoon | Reuters
OpenAI and SoftBank announced plans to invest $1 billion in SB Energy as part of a strategic partnership that will support OpenAI’s artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout.
The partnership is part of the $500 billion Stargate commitment that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle announced last January at the White House, according to a Friday release. As part of the agreement, SB Energy will build and operate OpenAI’s 1.2 gigawatt data center site in Milam County, Texas that was announced in September.
“Partnering with SB Energy brings together their strength in data center infrastructure and energy development and OpenAI’s deep domain expertise in data center engineering,” Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, said in a statement on Friday. “The result is a fast, reliable way to scale compute through large, highly optimized AI data centers.”
SB Energy is backed by SoftBank and Ares Management. The company develops, owns and operates energy projects across the U.S. It has offices in Redwood City, California, San Diego and Denver, according to its website.
In addition to the investment, SB Energy has also formed a non-exclusive preferred partnership with OpenAI and SoftBank to develop “a new model for data center builds,” according to the release. That model will combine OpenAI’s first-party data center design with SB Energy’s “proven expertise in speed, cost discipline, and integrated energy delivery,” the companies said.
The company has several multi-gigawatt data center campuses in development, and initial facilities are under construction and expected to enter service this year, the release said.
SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI have become increasingly intertwined over the past year.
Two months after the Stargate project was announced, OpenAI said it closed a $40 billion financing round led by SoftBank, the largest private tech funding on record. The round included participation from core investor Microsoft, as well as Coatue, Altimeter and Thrive.
SoftBank said in November that it’s sold its entire stake in chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion as it looks to capitalize on its “all in” bet on OpenAI.
The ChatGPT maker is burning through mounds of cash, and is still far from profitability, meaning it remains heavily reliant on outside capital.
OpenAI has inked more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure deals in recent months to try and build out the data centers it says are needed to meet growing demand. In November, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company was on track to generate more than $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate in 2025, with plans to grow to hundreds of billions in sales by 2030.
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