OpenAI + Softbank Splurge $1B On Enough Energy to Make God Blink…

If there’s one person who knows “you gotta spend money to lose money,” it’s Masa Son (sup, WeWork)…

Masa Son is back on his B.S. and this time he’s got Sam Altman with him at the hip as OpenAI and SoftBank just dropped $1 billion into SB Energy so they can keep feeding the machine. Literally. We’re talking about power plants, transmissions, land, steel, dirt, and the Texas hell-blazin’ heat beating down on servers that hum like the “Final Siren”. 

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, the $1B is going into SB Energy, which will build and operate a 1.2 gigawatt data center site in Milam County, Texas. For reference, that’s not a “data center.” That’s a small city that only exists to think and a big enough power bill to make God blink. For more context, this is part of the $500 billion “Stargate” commitment that got announced at the White House last year. Remember that? Everyone dunked on it. “Fake number.” “SoftBank math.” “PR stunt.” Now? They’re officially pouring concrete. 

(Source: CNBC) 

However, while most of the headlines scream “OpenAI is buying energy” with this… the real story is that OpenAI vertically integrating reality. SB Energy doesn’t just flip switches. They develop, own, and operate energy projects. Solar, storage, grid hookups, the whole unsexy stack. Which means OpenAI isn’t just renting compute anymore. They’re designing the entire pipeline from electrons to tokens. And that, my friends, is a different animal. Meaning, while everyone else is still fighting over GPUs like raccoons in a parking lot, OpenAI is out here locking down land, power, and permitting.

Now add in the fact that Softbank sold off it’s entire Nvidia stake last year, and suddenly everything starts to make more sense. Why own the shovel when you can own the mine, the power plant, and the road leading to it? That said, yes, OpenAI is still lighting cash on fire. They’re nowhere near profitability. They’re addicted to capital like it’s oxygen. But that’s kind of the point. You don’t build a global compute monopoly by being EBITDA-positive in year five. You do it by surviving long enough for everyone else to suffocate. And yet, Altman’s been pretty open about the ambition: $20B run rate in 2025, “hundreds of billions” by 2030. Laugh if you want. People laughed at AWS margins too. Right up until they stopped.

(Source: Giphy) 

Translation: Data centers are the new factories. Power is the new oil. Texas is the new Shenzhen. And if you thought labor fights were spicy when robots showed up in warehouses, wait until local grids start buckling because a chatbot needs to finish a sentence faster. Fun times. So yeah… big things are happening. Meaning, keep your eyes on this story and as always… place your bets accordingly, friends. Until next time… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.