OpenAI Got $5.5B in SB Energy Warrants to Lease Nvidia-Backed AI Data Centers

OpenAI holds warrants in SoftBank Group subsidiary SB Energy now valued at approximately $5.5 billion, according to draft initial public offering documents. The disclosure illustrates increasingly complex financing structures within artificial intelligence infrastructure, where OpenAI operates simultaneously as an investor, tenant, vendor, and warrant holder. SB Energy, which has nearly nine gigawatts of contracted computing capacity and a backlog exceeding $400 billion, received a $500 million investment from both OpenAI and SoftBank to develop major data center capacity. Nvidia Corporation has substantially bolstered the initiative by investing $1.5 billion into SB Energy and agreeing to provide up to $105 billion in guarantees covering OpenAI's lease obligations for the initial 4.25 gigawatts of capacity. The planned southern Ohio campus will exclusively deploy Nvidia hardware, with the chipmaker projecting that each deployment cycle could encompass 1.5 million GPUs and generate $150 billion to $200 billion in revenue, further expanding Nvidia's market reach despite ongoing debates regarding circular financing across the AI ecosystem.