SoftBank Acquires DigitalBridge for $4B in Move to Boost AI Infrastructure

SoftBank’s acquisition of DigitalBridge marks an important inflection point in the AI infrastructure race. By buying one of the largest digital infrastructure asset managers, SoftBank is not just adding scale, but acquiring ownership of core real-estate in the compute stack—data centers, connectivity, fiber, etc.—that are becoming as strategic as AI models themselves. This is a classic “picks and shovels” play, marrying capital, real assets and growth.

Despite the deal being relatively modest at US$4 billion enterprise value—including debt—it buys access to a US$108 billion asset base. SoftBank’s valuation identity here hinges on the ability to deploy those assets in high-utilization, high-density compute workloads tied to AI training and inference. Margins will be critically dependent on power, land, cooling, network interconnects, and regulatory regimes.

Maintaining DigitalBridge as a separately managed platform under its existing leadership is likely designed to preserve operational autonomy, existing customer relationships and expertise, especially in managing distributed infrastructure across multiple geographies. It reduces execution risk but creates potential friction in integration, capital allocation, and aligning internal incentives.

Strategically, this move complements SoftBank’s prior and concurrent investments: notably its withdrawal from Nvidia, increased funding to OpenAI, and participation in the Stargate initiative with Oracle. It signals a shift from owning intellectual property and models to owning infrastructure, reflecting recognition that bottlenecks in AI are increasingly physical—including energy, connectivity, and real-estate.

Open questions remain: can SoftBank generate sufficient returns on low-margin infrastructure assets? How will regulatory scrutiny of large infrastructure consolidation and cross-border data flows affect the deal? Will rising power costs and ESG concerns challenge profitability? And how successfully SoftBank can integrate—or at least coordinate—DigitalBridge’s operations with its broader ASI vision without eroding value by over-centralization.