OpenAI and SoftBank Group Partner with SB Energy on Multi-Gigawatt AI Data Center Campuses

Collaboration Parties and Strategic Positioning

OpenAI, SoftBank Group, and SB Energy—the SoftBank Group-owned renewable energy subsidiary—have formed a tripartite partnership to scale AI infrastructure purpose-built for large language model training and inference. The collaboration emphasizes vertical integration of energy and compute, aligning SB Energy’s clean power development capabilities with OpenAI’s computational demands.

The 1.2 GW Texas Facility as a Critical Node of Stargate

• The first project is located in Texas, USA, with a planned capacity of 1.2 GW—the largest publicly disclosed single-site energy supply dedicated to an AI data center to date;
• This facility explicitly supports OpenAI’s Stargate initiative: a long-term infrastructure program aimed at building ultra-scale AI compute clusters;
• SB Energy will design, build, and operate the renewable generation assets—including solar PV and battery storage—to ensure 100% zero-carbon power delivery to the data center.

Architectural Significance: Shifting from Cloud Rental to Energy-Compute Co-Development

• This marks a strategic pivot by leading AI organizations away from conventional cloud leasing toward physical-layer control of compute infrastructure via deep energy partnerships;
• A 1.2 GW capacity corresponds to sustained power for approximately 100,000–150,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs (at ~700W TDP per GPU), underscoring unprecedented requirements for power density and grid stability;
• Stargate thus gains a predictable, low-cost, zero-carbon energy foundation—essential for training next-generation models such as GPT-5.