The SoftBank Steal: Is DigitalBridge Being Underpriced in the Race for Artificial Super Intelligence?

The global race for artificial intelligence dominance has officially moved from the cloud to the concrete. On Monday, December 29, 2025, the digital infrastructure sector was jolted by the announcement that Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire DigitalBridge Group Inc. (NYSE: DBRG) for approximately $4 billion, including debt. The all-cash transaction, valued at $16.00 per share, represents a 15% premium over DigitalBridge’s closing price on December 26. However, as the dust settles and the stock experiences volatile pre-market swings—surging nearly 50% before paring gains to roughly 10%—investors are left with a critical question: Is SoftBank securing a generational bargain, or is $16.00 the ceiling for a firm that has spent years pivoting from legacy real estate to AI-ready digital infrastructure?

A deep dive into the fundamentals suggests that while the deal offers immediate liquidity, the $4 billion price tag might significantly undervalue the strategic leverage DigitalBridge provides in the emerging era of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). To understand this valuation disconnect, one must look past the modest share price and into the massive $108 billion asset-under-management (AUM) engine that SoftBank is essentially taking private at a fraction of its true replacement cost.

The Architect of AI Infrastructure

DigitalBridge, under the leadership of CEO Marc Ganzi, has successfully completed one of the most complex corporate transformations in modern finance. Formerly known as Colony Capital, the firm shed its hotels, warehouses, and retail properties to go “all-in” on the backbone of the digital economy: data centers, cell towers, fiber networks, and small cells. Today, its portfolio includes heavyweights like Vantage Data Centers, DataBank, and Switch Inc.—the very facilities currently being leased by the likes of NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI to house the H100 and Blackwater clusters that power generative AI.

The timing of SoftBank’s move is predatory in its precision. As of December 2025, the global demand for AI-optimized data centers has outpaced supply by nearly three to one. DigitalBridge is not just a landlord; it is an “execution platform.” It controls power banks and land plots in critical U.S. markets—Texas, Ohio, and New Mexico—that would take competitors years to permit and develop. By acquiring DigitalBridge, SoftBank isn’t just buying a stock; it is buying time. The $16.00 per share offer comes just as DigitalBridge’s “Stargate” initiative—a $500 billion venture with OpenAI and Oracle—begins to break ground.

Valuation Analysis: The $4 Billion Question

When we scrutinize the $4 billion enterprise value, the “undervalued” argument becomes compelling. DigitalBridge manages $108 billion in assets. In the private equity world, asset managers are typically valued on a multiple of their Fee-Related Revenue (FRR) or as a percentage of AUM. DigitalBridge’s FRR reached approximately $93.5 million in Q3 2025 alone, with fee-related earnings (FRE) margins expanding to a record 40%.

Publicly traded peers in the data center space, such as Equinix or Digital Realty, trade at massive enterprise-value-to-EBITDA multiples, often exceeding 20x or 25x. While DigitalBridge is an asset manager rather than a pure-play REIT, its “control” over these assets gives it a strategic value that $16.00 per share fails to fully capture. RBC Capital Markets had previously raised its price target for DBRG to $23.00, citing the massive tailwinds of AI infrastructure. SoftBank’s offer represents a significant discount to these analyst projections, suggesting that SoftBank is capitalizing on a “liquidity gap” in the public markets where DBRG had been unfairly penalized for its complex structure.

The Strategic Synergy with SoftBank’s Vision

Masayoshi Son has been vocal about his shift toward “Artificial Super Intelligence.” His vision requires a seamless stack: the chips (ARM), the models (OpenAI investment), and now, the physical infrastructure (DigitalBridge). By bringing DigitalBridge into the fold, SoftBank solves its most pressing bottleneck: where to put the compute power.

SoftBank recently sold its stake in NVIDIA for nearly $6 billion, and it is now redirecting that capital into hard assets. DigitalBridge’s credit unit, which provides specialized loans for data center construction, fits perfectly into SoftBank’s plan to finance the $500 billion Stargate project. Effectively, SoftBank is buying an internal bank and an internal developer for the AI age. For SoftBank shareholders, this is a masterstroke. For DigitalBridge shareholders, the 15% premium feels like a “participation trophy” in a race where the winner takes all.

Why the Market is Skeptical

The pre-market behavior—where the stock jumped 50% before retracting—indicates a tug-of-war between arbitrageurs and skeptics. The skeptics point to DigitalBridge’s historical volatility and its negative operating margins (roughly -44% in recent reports). However, these losses are largely a function of the firm’s transition and the heavy capital expenditure required to scale AI data centers. In the world of private equity, net income is often a poor metric; AUM growth and FRR are the true north stars.

Furthermore, the deal is not expected to close until the second half of 2026. This long lead time introduces regulatory risk. Any acquisition of sensitive U.S. digital infrastructure by a foreign entity—even a long-standing partner like Japan’s SoftBank—could face scrutiny from CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). The current trading price of $15.26, below the $16.00 offer, reflects the market’s “wait-and-see” approach to these regulatory hurdles.

Investment Verdict: Sell into the News or Hold for a Higher Bid?

For current holders of DigitalBridge, the recommendation is a nuanced “Hold” with a tactical eye on the exit. The $16.00 offer provides a floor, but there is a non-zero chance of a rival bid. Given the scarcity of digital infrastructure platforms, a “white knight” like Blackstone or Brookfield could theoretically emerge, as they have been aggressively hunting for the same assets.

However, for new investors, the “Buy” window is closing. With the stock trading so close to the acquisition price, the upside is capped at the 5% arbitrage spread, unless a bidding war erupts. The true “Buy” recommendation here shifted to SoftBank (TYO: 9984) itself. SoftBank is the entity that will capture the massive “multiple expansion” of DigitalBridge’s assets once they are integrated into a private, high-growth AI ecosystem.

DigitalBridge’s journey from a distressed real estate firm to a $4 billion AI cornerstone is a testament to the power of thematic investing. While the $16.00 price tag may feel low to those who understood the firm’s intrinsic potential, it provides a clean exit for those who survived the volatility of the past three years. SoftBank, meanwhile, has just secured the keys to the kingdom of the AI future, paying a price that history will likely remember as a bargain.

The Macro Context: AI’s Thirst for Power

The broader implication of this deal is a warning to the market: physical infrastructure is the new “SaaS.” In 2024 and 2025, investors poured money into software companies and LLM developers. But in 2026, the bottleneck is electricity and floor space. DigitalBridge’s portfolio includes seven gigawatts of combined power capacity across its newest sites. To put that in perspective, that is enough to power millions of AI training runs simultaneously.

SoftBank’s acquisition confirms that the “valuation” of a company in this space is no longer just about its earnings per share, but about its “Megawatts under management.” As long as the AI boom continues, the assets DigitalBridge owns will appreciate at a rate far higher than the 15% premium offered by SoftBank. If you are looking for the next DigitalBridge, look to the firms that control the electrical grid and the cooling systems of tomorrow. The era of digital real estate has only just begun.