Goldman Sachs joins SoftBank IPO preparations for energy and robotics spinouts

Goldman Sachs has landed a spot in SoftBank’s IPO preparations for two businesses that sit at the center of the AI buildout: SB Energy and Roze, the planned autonomous robotics spinout. The mandate puts Goldman alongside JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi and Mizuho at a moment when public-market work is still reopening unevenly, but the pipeline for AI infrastructure deals is already getting busy.

SB Energy is the more immediate listing candidate. The company was founded in 2019 as a SoftBank Group business and has positioned itself around the physical backbone of the AI economy. In March, SB Energy said OpenAI and SoftBank Group would each invest $500 million, bringing total fresh capital to $1 billion, and said OpenAI had selected it to build and operate a 1.2-gigawatt data center site in Milam County, Texas. The company also said it had previously secured $800 million of redeemable preferred equity from Ares Management. SB Energy confidentially filed a draft registration statement for a U.S. initial public offering on May 20.

That filing set the stage for a broader syndicate push that could value SB Energy above $50 billion and bring it to market as early as September. For bankers, that kind of transaction is not just another IPO assignment. It is a mix of energy, infrastructure, technology and data-center finance, which means more work for teams that can translate long-dated power and construction projects into an equity story public investors will buy.

Roze points to the next wave of that theme. SoftBank has been planning to create and list the U.S.-based AI and robotics company as a way to package robotics, data centers and construction efficiency into one public-market narrative. SoftBank executives have been targeting a valuation of about $100 billion for the business, which is expected to use robotics to improve the efficiency of AI infrastructure construction.

For Goldman employees, the message is clear. The firm’s capital-markets franchise is being pulled deeper into the AI stack, not just chips and software but power generation, physical construction and automation. That should keep technology, industrials, energy and equity capital markets bankers working together more often, with more ECM preparation, more sector specialization and more pressure to move quickly on complex materials. It also creates another route for fee generation before a full IPO reopening, a reminder that the most attractive mandates now sit where AI meets steel, land, concrete and electrons.