# OpenAI gets $5.5 billion in SB Energy warrants ahead of SoftBank IPO

> Here is a glimpse of how far infrastructure players will go to lock in the AI leaders. According to the Wall Street Journal, SB Energy, SoftBank's data center venture, handed OpenAI 5.5 billion dollars worth of warrants as an incentive to join its compute partnership, a sweetener granted ahead of a potential SoftBank public offering. Warrants are essentially the right to buy shares later at a set price, so this is a bet that pays off richly for OpenAI if the venture goes public and its value climbs. In effect, SoftBank is offering equity upside, not just a supply contract, to make sure the most sought-after AI customer is on board. The detail says a lot about the current market. Compute is the scarce resource, and the companies building data centers are competing so hard for anchor tenants that they will hand over billions in potential future value to land one. For OpenAI, it is another arrangement that deepens its entanglement with SoftBank's expanding empire of AI infrastructure bets.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: Wall Street Journal · Published Monday, August 31, 2026_

## Wortins' read

Here is a glimpse of how far infrastructure players will go to lock in the AI leaders. According to the Wall Street Journal, SB Energy, SoftBank's data center venture, handed OpenAI 5.5 billion dollars worth of warrants as an incentive to join its compute partnership, a sweetener granted ahead of a potential SoftBank public offering. Warrants are essentially the right to buy shares later at a set price, so this is a bet that pays off richly for OpenAI if the venture goes public and its value climbs. In effect, SoftBank is offering equity upside, not just a supply contract, to make sure the most sought-after AI customer is on board. The detail says a lot about the current market. Compute is the scarce resource, and the companies building data centers are competing so hard for anchor tenants that they will hand over billions in potential future value to land one. For OpenAI, it is another arrangement that deepens its entanglement with SoftBank's expanding empire of AI infrastructure bets.

## Source

[Read the full story at Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-5-5-billion-perk-softbanks-data-center-venture-offered-to-land-openai-a5c7fb5e)

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