Franz Seidelhuber has been named the vice president of data center operations at SoftBank's SB Energy.

For the past 22 years, Seidelhuber was the CEO and founder of data center construction management firm Studio 151, which was acquired by SB this January.

The acquisition came alongside SB Energy announcing that it had partnered with OpenAI to build and operate a 1.2GW Stargate data center in Milam County, Texas. OpenAI also said that it would invest $500m in SB Energy, alongside an equal investment from SoftBank.

SoftBank is simultaneously an investor in both Stargate, OpenAI's data center joint venture, and OpenAI itself. The company has turned to debt markets to cover the tens of billions it has pumped into both OpenAI and its data centers.

SB Energy is not purely focused on OpenAI projects, and currently supplies power to a Google data center in Texas, among other projects.

"I am thrilled to share that after 22 years of building Studio 151 into a leading capital projects service firm, we are now integrating with SB Energy," Seidelhuber said.

"Over the last 18 months, we got to know the SB Energy team, including Abhijeet Sathe and Rich Hossfeld, as we worked closely on their growing data center infrastructure business. Now our incredible team — that has successfully built 20 data centers across the country — will be integrated and dedicated to delivering on SB Energy’s mission to advance AI data center campuses and associated power infrastructure."