Analysts weigh China's block of SoftBank's $5.3 billion ABB Robotics purchase
From the Robots digest for Nov 6, 2026
Sources The Robot Report
What happened: China's foreign-investment security review office — the Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review — has blocked SoftBank's planned acquisition of ABB's robotics business in China, a piece of the $5.3 billion divestment ABB agreed with SoftBank in October 2025. ABB confirmed the block to The Robot Report and says the companies remain "in close dialogue and are working constructively on the transaction."
What's genuinely new: Financial Times reporter Zijing Wu says China's state planning office, the NDRC, worried that robotics data generated in China could be transferred abroad to train AI models — including those of OpenAI, in which SoftBank is a major investor — and that robotics data has become more strategic since the September release of OpenAI's GPT-6, which Chinese AI firms used to train their own models. Analysts at Interact Analysis call industrial robotics "strategically important technology at the intersection of automation, data, and AI" and say separating ABB's heavily built-out Chinese operation from a global sale would be "extremely challenging"; Gecko Robotics' Ahmed Humayun adds that the move also reflects Japan–China tensions. The backdrop: European scrutiny helped end Amazon's purchase of iRobot, which then entered bankruptcy and was bought by Shenzhen's Picea Robotics, while the US FCC has banned new foreign-made legged robots and mobile robots and the Commerce Department has determined that robotics imports pose a threat to US economic and national security, which could lead to tariffs. ABB Robotics has installed more than 500,000 robots worldwide and employs about 7,000 people.
Watch: whether a restructured deal or carve-out clears China's review, the remaining approvals, the fate of ABB's Shanghai operations and Chinese order book, and whether the Section 232 finding turns into tariffs.