OpenAI – the maker of ChatGPT – filed for a confidential IPO on June 8.
That puts the company on track for an Initial Public Offering in late 2026 or early 2027. And right now, you can secure a stake at a deep discount to the expected IPO price.
A $50 billion IPO is coming — possibly this month.
My advice: let this one pass.
SB Energy filed for its IPO in early September. Here are the details:
Proposed ticker: SBE
Target raise: $5 – $7 billion
Target valuation: roughly $50 billion
IPO date: late September / early October
SB Energy is a SoftBank-controlled developer of power assets and AI data centers. The headline number is a contracted revenue backlog of roughly $439 billion — mostly leases with OpenAI, with some backstop support from Nvidia.
Want to invest in OpenAI before the IPO? Here’s how to get started.
That sounds incredible. Now here's the rest of the story.
None of the company's planned data centers are operational. Not one.
First-half revenue was about $139 million — almost all from legacy solar and battery projects. The company lost $3.2 billion over the same six months.
And the backlog is far away. Roughly 82% of it isn't expected to arrive for at least eight years. Some of those leases stretch toward the 2050s.
The flagship project is the PORTS-Pike campus in Ohio. It accounts for 90% of the contracted data center capacity, with phases starting between 2028 and 2032. That single campus depends on a 9.2-gigawatt natural gas plant that SB Energy won't own or operate. A SoftBank affiliate is supposed to build it. There are no binding agreements to fund or construct that plant yet.
The delay penalties are unusual. If PORTS-Pike misses its deadline, OpenAI gets a free day of rent for every day of delay — doubling after 90 days. On the Texas project, a one-year delay could let OpenAI buy the data center at a steep discount.
Getting there requires about $174 billion in capital spending, funded mostly with debt. The filing says the company is "substantially dependent" on OpenAI — a customer with no credit rating.
Here’s the bottom line.
SB Energy is an experienced power developer. The operating costs pass through to the tenant, and Nvidia's involvement adds real support. If everything lands on schedule, the backlog is genuine.
But this IPO asks you to pay for the AI boom today and wait nearly a decade to get paid. I'll watch the stock trade from the sidelines.
Buying shares of Anthropic or OpenAI before they IPO is a far more attractive setup. And I’ll show you how claim your stake today.
Ian Wyatt
Editor, IPO Watch