SoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4bn, the companies said on Monday, as the Japanese investment firm looks to deepen its AI-related portfolio.<\/p>\n
The acquisition would expand SoftBank\u2019s exposure to digital infrastructure as the Japanese conglomerate is positioning its portfolio to focus on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
SoftBank\u2019s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to capitalize on surging demand for the computing capacity that underpins artificial intelligence applications.<\/p>\n
DigitalBridge invests in digital infrastructure sectors such as datacenters, cell towers, fiber networks, small-cell systems and edge infrastructure, with a portfolio including companies such as Vantage Data Centers, Zayo, Switch and AtlasEdge.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1991 as real estate-focused Colony Capital, the firm pivoted under CEO Marc Ganzi into digital infrastructure and rebranded as DigitalBridge in 2021 after shedding most of its legacy property assets.<\/p>\n
Ganzi will continue leading DigitalBridge as a separately managed platform, the companies said.<\/p>\n
As of 30 September, DigitalBridge managed around $108bn in assets, making it one of the largest dedicated investors in the digital ecosystem.<\/p>\n
SoftBank has ramped up investment in AI as it seeks to position itself at the center of what Son has called a once-in-a-generation technological shift.<\/p>\n
The company, along with OpenAI, Oracle and Abu Dhabi-based tech investor MGX, is investing billions of dollars in the Stargate project, a large-scale computing and infrastructure initiative aimed at supporting advanced AI development.<\/p>\n
OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank said in September they plan to build five new computing sites across Texas, New Mexico and Ohio, which are expected to have a combined power capacity of about 7GW when in operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4bn, the companies said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-341991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}