SB Energy to sell up to US$500 million in shares to Japan investors as part of US IPO

TOKYO: Data centre developer SB Energy, backed by SoftBank Group, will sell up to US$500 million in shares to Japanese investors as part of a public listing in the US, a filing showed on Tuesday.

The firm will issue new shares to the Japanese investors, and the funds will be used for general operating costs for developing data centres, power generation and related infrastructure projects, the filing said.

The filing did not reveal the size of the US IPO. SoftBank may seek a valuation of US$50 billion for SB Energy, Reuters has reported.

Chipmaker Nvidia has committed to invest US$1.5 billion in a private placement at the IPO price, and OpenAI has been issued warrants worth roughly US$5.5 billion, SB Energy reported in its investment prospectus, released earlier in September.

Investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence has prompted a wave of public listings in related firms this year, with SpaceX listing in June and Anthropic preparing to list later this year.

Japanese investors secured US$2.2 billion of SpaceX shares in its IPO.