SoftBank closes $3.1bn DigitalBridge take-private, de-listing the $108bn manager

SoftBank Group has closed its purchase of DigitalBridge Group, paying approximately $3.1 billion for all outstanding common stock of the digital infrastructure investor and delisting it from the New York Stock Exchange in a take-private announced in December.

DigitalBridge becomes a controlled subsidiary of SoftBank and continues as a separately managed platform under current chief executive Marc Ganzi, Data Center Dynamics reported. None of DigitalBridge's portfolio companies are part of the transaction, and SoftBank will fold the firm's financial position and results into its consolidated statements from the closing date.

SoftBank bought only the capital-raising and management layer, not the assets underneath it. DigitalBridge manages more than $108 billion across stakes in AIMS, AtlasEdge, DataBank, Switch, Takanock, Vantage Data Centers and Yondr Group, plus telecom towers and fiber networks. The $3.1 billion is a price on that management layer against assets it oversees but does not own, which makes the fee stream on the $108 billion an earnings question SoftBank will now answer on its own schedule. PWD has argued that digital infrastructure has become two markets: assets anchored by a named hyperscaler get infrastructure pricing, and everything else waits for a lease. DigitalBridge holds positions on both sides.

DigitalBridge began as Colony Capital in 1991. Ganzi founded Digital Bridge in 2013, Colony acquired it in 2019 for $325 million, and the combined company took the DigitalBridge name in 2021 while selling most of its non-digital assets. SoftBank's price is roughly nine and a half times the 2019 figure, though the two purchases are not the same asset: Colony bought a manager, SoftBank bought all outstanding common stock of a company that by then ran $108 billion.

Recent dealmaking has leaned on single credits and power positions. In September, the buyers in DigitalBridge's 16.2x tower transaction were described as underwriting one tenant's lease in one country, with Liberty Global shedding infrastructure ahead of a listing. Switch, one of the portfolio companies named in the closing announcement, has tied a three-building Pittsburgh campus to 270MW of backup generation and the 345kV lines already on the land. Both put the value in a lease, a tenant or a grid connection rather than in the manager's own balance sheet.

DigitalBridge's economics now sit inside SoftBank's consolidated statements, visible only to the extent SoftBank chooses to break them out. Whether the portfolio companies remain outside the subsidiary is the open item: the reported closing terms keep them out, and the coverage does not say more. The $3.1 billion is a private-market price for the layer that raises and manages other people's capital; SoftBank's next consolidated results will show whether that fee stream is material.