Wall Street Is Growing Skeptical of the Data Center Boom

The backlash against data centers that is shaping elections and kitchen table debates across the country is now spilling onto Wall Street.

Companies that house the data centers or supply them with energy and land for construction were expected to dominate the initial public offering market over the coming months, feeding investors’ seemingly insatiable appetite for everything related to artificial intelligence.

But some investors are voicing increasing skepticism about the growth expectations for data centers and the risks associated with their build-out, forcing industry executives and their advisers to recalibrate their plans to raise tens of billions of dollars in public markets.

SB Energy, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank that has proposed to build the largest data center project in the world in Ohio, had originally planned its I.P.O. for this month.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/business/ai-data-center-ipos.html