Funding the digital backbone: DigitalBridge's credit team on market trends and AI impact

The digital infrastructure boom — from data centres to fibre networks, towers to GPUs — brings with it an enormous appetite for capital.

DigitalBridge's credit platform has stepped in to bridge this gap, funding next-generation infrastructure projects while delivering returns for investors.

Among its growing portfolio of digital infrastructure investments, the platform's standout achievement was helping up-and-coming cloud computing startup CoreWeave secure a $2.3 billion debt facility.

Ahead of Metro Connect 2025, Capacity sat down with Chris Moon and Horace Zona, both managing directors for credit at DigitalBridge, to discuss evolving financing demands and how their industry connections enable them to craft tailored funding solutions.

Amid the evolving digital infrastructure credit landscape, fluctuating interest rates have loomed over the market.

While the rise in rates initially created uncertainty, DigitalBridge’s credit team sees the current environment as a stabilising force rather than a constraint.

Horace Zona emphasised that perspective when considering interest rates is crucial. “If you look at interest rates over a 10 to 30-year period, they’re not high,” he said. “Though we had a rising rate environment, that definitely affected the way companies deployed capital because they didn’t understand where rates were going to settle out.”

Zona opined that it was uncertainty around rate movements — rather than the rates themselves — that has had the biggest impact on financing decisions.

Chris Moon suggested that rate stabilisation will, in turn, unlock new opportunities, adding: “The concept of rate stabilisation is getting us closer and closer to unlocking the M&A pipeline again.

“Given where we're headed here, it feels like the M&A market is just going to open up, which essentially doubles the aperture of the deals that we look at.”

When it comes to structuring deals, the team at DigitalBridge contend that flexibility is key.

Their credit platform operates across the capital structure, offering first lien, second lien, holdco loans, and even preferred equity. The pair suggest that their ability to adapt to market conditions allows them to navigate both risk-on and risk-off environments.

“Since the Russia-Ukraine situation that started to develop and cascade across the capital markets in 2022, we’ve been focused more on senior secured,” Moon said. “We've been able to still find value, [despite] rates and risk premiums still being rather high, we've found the ability in senior secured or stretched senior secured to provide a great risk return.”

Zona added that DigitalBridge’s focus areas enable it to unlock opportunities where traditional lenders struggle to provide capital.

“There are places in the capital markets where the investor universe is wide and markets are highly liquid, and that’s probably not the best place for us to play,” he said.

Instead, the firm looks for opportunities in areas like GPU financing, non-investment-grade project financing for data centres, and power and land financing — areas where traditional lenders may hesitate.

Instead of hesitating, Moon, Zona, and the wider investment team use their expertise to react to opportunities in a way that’s both fast and yet transparent.

“We don't have layers of bureaucracy, we don't have competing interests. We're all trying to do the same thing,” Zona said. “I see it on a completely different level here, because of our focus and because of our mandate and because of the opportunity, it really comes together in quite a special way.”

Capacity’s conversation with the DigitalBridge team came at an opportune time, occurring midway through the “DeepSeek sell-off” where some of the biggest tech firms in the world saw billions of dollars of valuation wiped in a matter of days, just a week after the Stargate announcement pledged $500 billion to spend on AI infrastructure.

The DeepSeek sell-off served as a reminder of how volatile AI-related investments can be. But for DigitalBridge, the focus remains on long-term fundamentals rather than short-term market swings.

While it’s tough to tell if the market panic represented a seismic shift in tech valuation, for Zona, Moon, and DigitalBridge’s investors, it’s not about guessing market shifts, it’s about remaining focused and looking at opportunities beyond the hype cycle, as Moon noted: “We've lived through multiple technology and platform shifts across various verticals of digital infrastructure.

“We are here to build and to finance tier-one physical layer assets. We like to think of ourselves as the pipes where the infrastructure that sits behind it. The technology can improve and can change, and we expect it to, but that's not the way we tie ourselves to investment decisions.”

There will be AI companies, be they DeepSeek, or others, that will inevitably rise and fall, but as Zona notes, there are already use cases driving real value that customers are willing to pay for.

“We see that in every business, not just tech-oriented businesses, but here, the opportunity has such a significant and solid foundation for organic activity and growth that it really is incredibly exciting, and that's obviously what motivates us each and every day.”

Despite market fluctuations, the DigitalBridge pair expressed optimism about the future of the digital infrastructure credit space.

 Moon told Capacity that he sees an untapped reservoir of private institutional capital that is well-suited to finance long-term infrastructure assets.

“From a demand perspective for our product, I think we're just getting started. We are still so untapped with all the private institutional capital that’s trying to manage long-term liabilities that are perfectly suited to be financing this asset class.”

The challenge, he noted, has been connecting these capital sources with infrastructure projects in a way that works for both sides.

Beyond the AI hype, the ever-continuing growth of cloud computing is continuing to provide opportunities for the credit market.

“Even though it’s been around for a decade, the level of growth that we’ve seen does not appear to be halting in any way, shape or form,” Zona explained, pointing to major cloud providers such as AWS and Azure, which continue to grow at double-digit rates despite already being multi-billion-dollar businesses.

“We’re talking about $15 to $30 billion businesses that are growing at somewhere between 20% and 40% per year with tremendous operating margins. There really isn’t a precedent for that type of organic activity.”

Beyond the cloud space, the DigitalBridge team are tracking a wide range of opportunities, with Moon revealing there are more than hundreds of opportunities in the pipeline.

“Looking at that whole spectrum, there’s maybe half a dozen to a dozen opportunities that are AI-related,” Moon said, adding that the investment team’s focus remains on broader infrastructure needs, including fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and IoT, the latter of which Zona believes is poised for a resurgence.

“Maybe [IoT] didn’t bring its promise five years ago when 5G came along, but now, with other new technologies coming into place, I think that area will have a renaissance.”

The pair suggested that what sets them apart is their deep industry relationships that are helping to provide a competitive edge.

“We bring a deep network of executive contacts. We bring a significant amount of transactional experience over the years,” Zona said. This network, combined with an intimate understanding of digital infrastructure, he suggested, allows the DigitalBridge team to move quickly and structure deals in ways that traditional lenders simply can’t.

Moon reinforced this point, noting that trust and experience are critical. “The universe is very small. We’ve got a very tight group of decision-makers that haven’t really turned over a lot over the course of the last decade.

“It certainly helps when [Zona] and I can get on the phone with someone that we've known for 10 to 15 years, and we're pitching against somebody who they're just meeting for the first time. That has an enormous benefit.”

This consistency allows DigitalBridge to leverage long-standing relationships to secure deals and structure financing efficiently. “When you can immediately dial into 20 years of structuring history on what’s worked, what hasn’t worked, and how people have solved problems, that is a fantastic leg up,” Moon added.

As digital infrastructure financing continues to evolve, Moon, Horace, and DigitalBridge are positioning themselves as a key player that is bridging the gap between institutional capital and next-generation infrastructure projects.

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