NVDA
SFTBY
The AI supply chain has entered its mutual fund era
Nvidia isn’t just selling the shovels anymore — it’s helping finance the gold rush. According to draft IPO documents, the chip giant has backed SB Energy with $1.5 billion and agreed to cover certain OpenAI lease losses on the first 4.25 gigawatts, with exposure capped at $105 billion. That’s not a typo. That’s a lot of confidence, or a very expensive insurance policy.
OpenAI sits in the middle like a very busy spider
The setup is delightfully tangled:
- OpenAI holds warrants in SB Energy now valued at roughly $5.5 billion
- OpenAI also invested $500 million in SB Energy
- SoftBank chipped in another $500 million
- SB Energy is building OpenAI’s first 1.2-gigawatt Texas data center
- SB Energy has promised to spend at least $50 million on OpenAI software through 2028
So yes, OpenAI is a customer, investor, and warrant holder all at once. That’s less “simple vendor relationship” and more “AI hall of mirrors.”
The big bet: data centers before data centers
SB Energy reportedly hasn’t brought a single data center online yet, but its draft IPO filing shows nearly nine gigawatts of contracted computing capacity and a backlog north of $400 billion. Nvidia’s stake in that future makes sense if you believe the AI buildout keeps snowballing. If you don’t, it starts to look like a circular-money trampoline.
Why Wall Street cares
For Nvidia holders, this is the upside story in overdrive: more infrastructure, more GPUs, more demand. But it also adds one more layer to the “who is paying whom?” debate that’s been trailing the AI boom like glitter after a parade. Big picture: Nvidia is becoming less just a chip company and more a financial engine powering the AI ecosystem — which is thrilling until the bill comes due.