Draft IPO documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal show that SB Energy, the SoftBank-backed data-center power venture supporting OpenAI’s Stargate build-out, granted OpenAI warrants worth roughly $5.5 billion as an inducement to anchor a Cincinnati-area site known as Ports-Pike.
OpenAI is not only the tenant that makes a multi-gigawatt campus financeable; it is also a warrant holder in the energy vehicle that will sell it power. Bloomberg reported SoftBank is seeking another $10 billion loan tied to its OpenAI stake.
Stargate’s bottleneck has never been only GPUs. It has been interconnects, transformers, water, and electrons. The warrant package locks demand and shares upside if the campus becomes a scarce asset.
Frontier labs now negotiate like hyperscalers — taking paper in the infrastructure stack rather than simply signing power-purchase agreements.
Key takeaway
The $5.5 billion warrant package shows how tightly model demand, SoftBank capital, and grid-scale power deals are now bundled.
Photo: Matthew Henry, via Unsplash. Sources: The Wall Street Journal · Bloomberg · AI Weekly. Reporting compiled August 31, 2026.
