Tech funding large SoftBank Group mentioned Wednesday it is going to purchase Swiss-Swedish agency ABB Robotics for practically $5.4 billion as a part of its plans to convey synthetic intelligence into the bodily realm.
ABB Robotics makes a speciality of industrial robots, similar to giant robotic arms that may make exact actions in factories.
Japan’s SoftBank—a significant investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI—mentioned the acquisition was a part of its AI-focused enterprise technique.
“SoftBank’s subsequent frontier is Bodily AI,” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son mentioned in a press release.
“We’ll unite world-class know-how and expertise beneath our shared imaginative and prescient to fuse Synthetic Tremendous Intelligence and robotics—driving a groundbreaking evolution that can propel humanity ahead.”
ABB Group issued a separate assertion to announce the agreed sale of its robotics division to SoftBank for $5.37 billion.
The acquisition will mix “ABB Robotics’ main know-how and trade experience with SoftBank’s state-of-the-art capabilities in AI, robotics and next-generation computing”, it mentioned.
The transaction is predicted to shut in mid- to late-2026 pending regulatory approval.
ABB Robotics has a workforce of round 7,000, and its 2024 revenues of $2.3 billion represented round seven % of ABB Group’s complete earnings.
ABB Group had beforehand deliberate to spin off the robotics enterprise as a individually listed firm.
SoftBank has pledged to plow not less than $100 billion into US President Donald Trump’s Stargate venture to construct AI infrastructure in the USA.
In the meantime, China’s Alibaba introduced in September it was teaming up with US chip large Nvidia on AI tech that it mentioned will speed up its improvement of humanoid robots.
© 2025 AFP
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SoftBank buys $5.4 bn robotics agency to advance ‘bodily AI’ (2025, October 8)
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