SoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4 billion, the companies said on Monday, as the Japanese investment firm looks to deepen its AI-related portfolio.<\/p>\n
The \u200cacquisition would \u200cexpand SoftBank’s exposure to digital infrastructure as the Japanese conglomerate is positioning its portfolio to focus on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
DigitalBridge shares \u200crose about 9.7% to $15.27 on Monday, following a 45% rise earlier this month after Bloomberg News first reported the acquisition talks.<\/p>\n
The $16 per share offer represents a 15% premium over DigitalBridge’s closing price on Friday and values the company at $2.92 billion, with the deal expected to close in the second half of next year. <\/p>\n
SoftBank’s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to capitalize on surging demand for the computing capacity \u200cthat underpins artificial \u200dintelligence applications.<\/p>\n
The acquisition “is certainly a milestone in solving critical infrastructure issues,” \u200dsaid Jacob Yahiayan, CEO at DigitalBridge investor Urban Logistic Advisory Services, \u200cbut noted SoftBank is still far from controlling 10% of the global hardware- and software-as-a-service market.<\/p>\n
DigitalBridge invests in digital infrastructure sectors such as data centers, 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 September 30, \u2060DigitalBridge managed around $108 billion in \u2060assets, making it one of the largest dedicated investors in the digital ecosystem.<\/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 seven gigawatts when in operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SoftBank Group will acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group in a deal valued at $4 billion, the companies said on Monday, as the Japanese investment firm looks to deepen its AI-related portfolio. The \u200cacquisition would \u200cexpand SoftBank’s exposure to digital infrastructure as the Japanese conglomerate is positioning its portfolio to focus on artificial intelligence. DigitalBridge shares \u200crose about 9.7% to $15.27 on Monday, following a 45% rise earlier this month after Bloomberg News first reported the acquisition talks. The $16 per share offer represents a 15% premium over DigitalBridge’s closing price on Friday and values the company at $2.92 billion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=982960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}