SoftBank terminates negotiations to acquire data center company Switch.

According to sources familiar with the matter, SoftBank Group has terminated the negotiations to acquire the American data center operator Switch Corporation, dealing a blow to founder Masayoshi Son's ambitions of building the "Stargate" artificial intelligence infrastructure. Son has been working for months to push through the approximately $50 billion acquisition of Switch. He believed that controlling the energy-efficient data center network of the company would help the $500 billion Stargate project and provide computational power support for partner OpenAI. However, the sources mentioned above stated that earlier this month, Son admitted that a full acquisition was no longer possible and canceled plans to announce it in January. As the matter has not been made public, these sources requested anonymity. They also mentioned that both parties are currently actively discussing partial investments or establishing a partnership. Earlier this month, SoftBank had just signed a $3 billion deal to acquire the publicly listed investment company DigitalBridge Group in New York. A SoftBank spokesperson did not respond to the issue, and representatives from Switch and DigitalBridge all declined to comment.