Nvidia is buying a further $1.5B of SB Energy shares at 90% of the price of the data centre developer’s coming US listing, taking its total backing to $3B. SB Energy has 8.8 gigawatts in contract or under construction in Texas and Ohio, while its parent’s European capacity is not due before 2031.
Nvidia is buying a further $1.5B of shares in SB Energy at 90% of the price of the SoftBank-owned developer’s coming US listing, Bloomberg reported, citing a regulatory filing on Monday. That takes its total backing to $3B.
The discount is the interesting part.
The chipmaker is taking new N class nonvoting shares in a private placement, which buys the economics and not the votes. It is also the supplier whose processors create the demand SB Energy is listing on. Nvidia bought into three land and power companies in August alone, as its liquid-cooled Rubin chips push rack density from roughly 250kW to 600kW.
SB Energy has the sites.
It holds 8.8 gigawatts of data centre capacity in contract or under construction, including projects in Texas and Ohio. OpenAI, which is planning a listing of its own, is also an investor. SB Energy is targeting $5B to $7B of proceeds.
It paid to get that tenant.
SB Energy gave OpenAI warrants worth $5.5B to anchor a 20-year lease on a 10 gigawatt campus in southern Ohio, due to run in 2028. The warrants were issued in January at $3.6B and had gained about $1.9B by June.
Europe gets the other half of the same group.
SoftBank has promised up to EUR 75B for 5 gigawatts of AI data centres in France, starting in Hauts-de-France at Dunkirk, Bosquel and Bouchain. The first phase is 3.1 gigawatts by 2031, and it sits in a separate vehicle from the one listing in New York. Schneider Electric is the strategic partner at Dunkirk, on a grid that is roughly 70% nuclear.
That is three years behind Ohio.
No European power developer is being financed this way. Nvidia is not buying discounted pre-listing stock in one, and no campus on this continent has a tenant paying its rent in warrants.
These economics have already failed here once.
OpenAI paused Stargate UK in April, a project it had announced with Nvidia and Nscale for northeast England, citing British industrial electricity prices more than four times those in the United States and uncertainty over copyright law. It said it would proceed when regulation and the cost of energy allow long-term infrastructure investment. Neither has changed since.