SoftBank Group has agreed to accumulate DigitalBridge in an all-cash deal valuing the agency at round $4 billion, because the Japanese conglomerate reshapes its portfolio round AI and the bodily infrastructure wanted to run it at scale.
Below the phrases of the settlement, SoftBank pays $16 per share for DigitalBridge, and mentioned the transaction implies a 15% premium to the corporate’s closing share worth on December 26, 2025, and a 50% premium to its ‘unaffected’ 52-week common closing worth as of December 4, 2025. The deal was beneficial by a particular committee of unbiased administrators and unanimously accredited by DigitalBridge’s board.
SoftBank mentioned the acquisition is meant to bolster its capacity to ‘originate, finance, function, and scale’ digital infrastructure globally, in response to fast-growing demand for compute and information centre capability pushed by AI workloads. DigitalBridge invests throughout information centres, cell towers, fibre networks, small cells and edge infrastructure, and says it has $108 billion in belongings below its administration.
“As AI transforms industries worldwide, we want extra compute, connectivity, energy, and scalable infrastructure,” mentioned Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp.
“DigitalBridge is a pacesetter in digital infrastructure, and this acquisition will strengthen the inspiration for next-generation AI information facilities, advance our imaginative and prescient to turn into a number one ASI platform supplier, and assist unlock breakthroughs that transfer humanity ahead.”
DigitalBridge’s portfolio consists of stakes in companies reminiscent of Vantage Information Facilities, Zayo, Swap and AtlasEdge, spanning hyperscale information centres and connectivity belongings which have turn into more and more strategic as AI fashions scale and inference workloads broaden.
“The buildout of AI infrastructure represents one of the vital important funding alternatives of our era,” mentioned Marc Ganzi, Chief Government Officer of DigitalBridge.
“SoftBank shares our DNA as builders and long-term buyers dedicated to scaling transformational digital infrastructure. Their imaginative and prescient, capital energy, and international community will permit us to speed up our mission with higher flexibility, make investments with a longer-term horizon on behalf of our buyers, and higher serve the world’s main expertise firms as they scale their AI ambitions.”
Following completion, DigitalBridge will proceed to function as a individually managed platform led by Ganzi, SoftBank mentioned. The deal is predicted to shut within the second half of 2026, topic to customary closing situations together with regulatory approvals.
Financing the AI buildout
The acquisition lands amid heightened investor scrutiny over how the AI infrastructure increase shall be financed – and whether or not the rising bubble will ever burst.
SoftBank has been more and more express that it desires publicity not solely to AI purposes, but additionally to the ‘picks and shovels’ enabling them. That features a main funding in OpenAI, which Reuters reported was totally funded at $40 billion by the tip of December 2025.
It additionally ties into SoftBank’s involvement in Stargate, the large-scale information centre initiative linked to OpenAI and Oracle, which has been pitched as a multi-site buildout designed to safe huge quantities of AI compute capability.
All of this deal making has pressured SoftBank to boost as a lot money as it might probably. In November 2025, it disclosed it had bought its total stake in Nvidia for round $5.8 billion, with the sale meant to bankroll Son’s ‘all in/’ push round OpenAI and associated AI investments.
Personal capital piles into information centres
SoftBank isn’t alone in making blockbuster offers within the information centre house. In actual fact, its newest transfer is a part of a a lot wider sample: massive asset managers and personal fairness teams are more and more treating information centres and connectivity as core infrastructure, with deal sizes rising as AI workloads put strain on capability.
In October 2025, a consortium involving BlackRock’s International Infrastructure Companions and Abu Dhabi-backed MGX introduced it will purchase Aligned Information Facilities in a deal reported at $40 billion – a headline determine that underlined simply how aggressively capital is chasing scaled platforms.
Elsewhere, in 2024 Blackstone accomplished its A$24 billion acquisition of AirTrunk, which was one of many largest information centre transactions on report on the time, and a transparent sign that hyperscale capability has turn into a mainstream goal for the world’s largest funding companies.
