Switch taps Goldman and JPMorgan for an IPO that could value it near $80 billion

Why it matters

Switch's possible IPO is a test of how much public investors will pay for AI's physical bottleneck: powered, cooled data center capacity controlled by a founder-led operator.

Switch, the Las Vegas data center operator founded and led by Rob Roy, has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as lead underwriters for a possible U.S. IPO that could raise up to $10 billion and value the company close to $80 billion including debt, Reuters reported on July 13.

The transaction is still in planning, not a filed offering. Reuters cited two people familiar with the matter and reported that the size, timing and valuation remain under discussion. The earliest timing in the report is the fourth quarter of 2026.

That caveat matters because the numbers are doing most of the work. Switch was taken private by DigitalBridge and IFM Investors in December 2022 for about $11 billion, including repayment of outstanding debt. A public-market valuation close to $80 billion would mark a steep reset in less than four years, driven by the market's repricing of power, cooling and dense computing capacity as scarce AI infrastructure.

Roy is the unusual throughline in that reset. He founded Switch in 2000 and remains its CEO and public face. Switch's own biography of Roy says he has more than 950 issued and pending patent claims tied to data center design.

The IPO is an AI infrastructure trade

Switch is a data center landlord with a founder-engineer story, but the IPO pitch is simpler: AI workloads need campuses with enough power, cooling and connectivity to run large GPU clusters. Reuters described Switch as operating large-scale campuses used by cloud providers and enterprises deploying energy-intensive systems for model training and inference. Reuters also reported that Switch customers include Nvidia, Dell Technologies and FedEx.

Switch has spent years positioning itself around those constraints. On Switch's about page, the company describes its core business as designing, constructing and operating advanced data centers. Switch lists Las Vegas, Tahoe Reno, Grand Rapids and Atlanta as major campus locations, and says Roy's designs underpin its data center architecture.

The company has also pushed the sustainability part of the story. Reuters noted that Switch's data centers have been powered by 100% renewable energy since 2016, and that the positioning could appeal to technology companies trying to meet decarbonization targets while expanding AI compute.

That is the tension public investors will have to underwrite. AI demand has made data center capacity one of the most attractive infrastructure assets in the market, but that demand also concentrates risk around electricity access, grid interconnection, cooling design, customer concentration and debt-funded expansion. The Reuters report does not include Switch's current revenue, EBITDA, debt load, campus capacity, utilization, contracted backlog or customer concentration. Those details would determine whether an $80 billion valuation is a public-market multiple, an infrastructure scarcity premium or both.

DigitalBridge and IFM bought before the AI repricing

DigitalBridge and IFM completed the Switch take-private on December 6th, 2022. The deal paid Switch shareholders $34.25 per share in cash and valued the transaction at roughly $11 billion including the repayment of outstanding debt, according to DigitalBridge's announcement. Switch's common stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, where it had traded under the ticker SWCH.

At the time, Roy said Switch was entering its next phase with infrastructure investors that had the financial resources to meet demand for advanced and sustainable data center infrastructure. That quote reads differently in 2026. The take-private gave Switch room to build outside the quarter-to-quarter glare of public markets, and the AI spending cycle has since made large-scale data center operators more valuable to public investors.

Reuters reported that Switch has also held discussions with private investors about raising capital at a valuation of at least $40 billion before the IPO. The report did not identify investors, a round size or final terms. Reuters said TMT Finance first reported those private-round preparations in March.

That possible private round is the bridge between the 2022 buyout and a 2026 IPO. If Switch sells shares privately before listing, the terms would help set a price floor for the IPO conversation. If it does not, public investors will get the first full look at how much value DigitalBridge, IFM and Aware Super have created since Switch left the market.

Aware Super, an Australian pension fund, bought a minority stake from Switch's owners in 2023, according to Reuters. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are the reported lead underwriters for the contemplated IPO, but Reuters did not report that either bank is investing in Switch.

The public-market window is open again

Switch is entering an IPO market that has reopened for AI-linked names. Reuters cited Dealogic data showing U.S. IPO proceeds at $155.5 billion so far in 2026, the strongest pace since 2021. Reuters also pointed to a broader pipeline of technology and infrastructure listings, including SoftBank-backed SB Energy and Brookfield-backed data center provider Csquare, which is targeting a valuation of up to $4.18 billion in its U.S. IPO.

Switch would sit at the hard-asset end of that pipeline. AI model companies sell software and access to intelligence. Chipmakers sell the processors and systems. Switch sells the physical substrate: powered, cooled, connected space where customers can deploy the compute. That substrate has become a bottleneck, and bottlenecks are where infrastructure investors look for durable returns.

Roy's advantage is that Switch can present itself as a founder-led technical operator rather than a financial roll-up chasing the latest demand cycle. Switch says Roy developed its power, cooling and density architecture over decades, including hot aisle containment, modular HVAC systems, multi-color power systems and autonomous building management software. The company claims more than 950 issued and pending patent claims tied to those designs.

Those claims will face a harder standard in an IPO filing. Public investors will want to see whether Switch's design history translates into margins, contracted growth and capital efficiency. They will also want to know how much of the AI upside is already reflected in the private owners' target valuation.

The cleanest version of the Switch story is that Roy built the right kind of infrastructure before the AI market knew how badly it would need it. The harder version is that every serious data center owner is now telling some form of that story. An S-1 would decide how much of Switch's version is supported by numbers.