SB Energy announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI and SoftBank Group to expand solar and energy storage infrastructure under the Stargate datacenter buildout initiative.
The agreement includes a $1 billion equity investment to fund the deployment of renewable energy assets. The capital follows a $800 million redeemable preferred equity investment from Ares Infrastructure Opportunities funds in 2025.
OpenAI selected SB Energy to build and operate a 1.2 GW data center site in Milam County, Texas, which will be powered by new solar generation and battery storage. The facility represents the initial phase of a development model combining data center design with SB Energy’s solar execution and energy delivery platform.
SB Energy is currently developing several multi gigawatt solar plus storage campuses with first deliveries scheduled for 2026.
The company recently acquired Studio 151 to integrate data center engineering with solar construction management and operations.
SB Energy operates more than 3 GW of solar capacity in the United States and maintains a development pipeline exceeding 15 GW of solar and 12 GWh of energy storage. These storage assets are designed to provide firm capacity for high density computing loads.
SB Energy and OpenAI plan to construct new utility scale solar power and integrated storage to support the energy requirements of the Milam County site. The project design focuses on grid modernization and the mitigation of solar intermittency.
The partnership aligns with the $500 billion Stargate commitment announced in January 2025 to deploy 10 GW of computing capacity paired with renewable energy. SB Energy is currently active in Texas and California, including developing the 900 MW Orion Solar Belt which provides solar power to Google data centers through previous power purchase agreements.
Grid bottleneck bypass
Hyperscale datacenter developers are co-locating generation and storage to avoid interconnection queues. The traditional grid is failing to meet the power requirements of generative AI, said Wood Mackenzie.
Alphabet (Google) announced a $4.75 billion acquisition of developer Intersect Power in December 2025. The deal allows Google to build infrastructure in along with new power generation, avoiding interconnection delays.
Solar and storage are the preferred solutions for the current power bottleneck due to project deployment speed and geographical flexibility, said the report. Solar and battery projects can be sited on or adjacent to data center campuses using a “private wire” or “direct connect” configuration. This allows developers to avoid the years-long wait times for traditional utility grid upgrades.
Unlike natural gas or nuclear, which require massive centralized infrastructure and long lead times for permitting, solar and storage are modular. This allows data center developers to pace power generation buildout with the phased construction of datacenters.
Developers are prioritizing sites where they can run private transmission lines from solar facilities to data centers. This private wire configuration removes projects from public interconnection queues.
Wood Mackenzie said access to power is the primary obstacle to AI growth. Over 24 GW of demand created by data center announcements were tracked in the first half of 2025. This volume is more than triple the amount recorded in the first half of 2024.
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