When you really want a tenant to sign the lease, you might offer a month of free rent. When the tenant is OpenAI and the landlord is SoftBank’s energy subsidiary, you offer $5.5 billion in stock warrants instead.
SB Energy, the SoftBank subsidiary building out massive AI data center campuses, has offered OpenAI warrants valued at roughly $5.5 billion to secure its long-term commitment as a tenant. The move comes as SB Energy prepares for an initial public offering targeting $5 to $7 billion in proceeds, making the warrant deal both a retention play and a pre-IPO sweetener rolled into one.
The anatomy of a $5.5 billion handshake
Stock warrants give the holder the right to buy shares at a set price in the future. In this case, OpenAI would gain the option to acquire equity in SB Energy at favorable terms, effectively giving it a financial stake in the very infrastructure it depends on.
This isn’t the first financial entanglement between the two. Back in January 2026, OpenAI and SoftBank each invested $500 million in SB Energy, alongside a lease agreement for a 1.2 gigawatt facility in Texas. Then in mid-August 2026, SB Energy announced an even larger project: a 10 gigawatt-scale data center campus in Ohio. OpenAI signed a 20-year lease for the facility, with initial capacity targeted for operations by 2028. Nvidia is also providing financial backing for the Ohio development.
