Beijing Vetoes SoftBank's Takeover of ABB Industrial Robotics Arm

China's foreign-investment security review, which sits under the National Development and Reform Commission, has refused to clear SoftBank's $5.4bn purchase of ABB's industrial robotics business, according to SoftBank, with ABB confirming on Thursday that it had been notified of the block. The deal bears on the AI agenda because industrial robots gather production-process data that can be used to train models, and because SoftBank is a major investor in OpenAI; the veto therefore lands on a transaction at the junction of robotics hardware and AI development rather than on an ordinary industrial sale.

The concern reported in Beijing is that data and technology collected at Chinese factories could be transferred abroad. AI Times reported the decision as resting on that anxiety, sharpened by SoftBank's OpenAI stake and the prospect that such data might feed Western AI work, but the sources present this as interpretation rather than a published finding. The commercial stakes are substantial. China is ABB Robotics' largest market, at roughly 30 per cent of the unit's revenue, while parent ABB Group ranks China as its second-largest market overall, with more than 90 per cent of its Chinese sales drawn from locally made products and services. The unit employs around 7,000 people, holds sites in some 130 Chinese cities and runs its global robotics headquarters and a research and production base in Shanghai; 2024 revenues of $2.3bn represented about 7 per cent of group income.

For SoftBank the decision interrupts a plan it announced in October 2025 as part of an AI-focused strategy. Masayoshi Son has cast robots as central to the group's AI investing, with the aim of applying AI to manufacturing and logistics, and the company had examined placing the acquired business in a separate vehicle for an initial public offering. ABB Group had earlier intended to spin the robotics unit off as a separately listed company. The block follows April's prohibition of Meta's acquisition of the startup Manus after regulatory review, and comes as Sino-American technology rivalry intensifies alongside diplomatic tension between China and Japan.

SoftBank said it and ABB were working constructively on the transaction, and AI Times reported that both were continuing consultations with Chinese authorities in an effort to salvage the deal. The next marker is whether those consultations produce a structure the review body will accept; with China tightening scrutiny of cross-border transfers of sensitive technology and data, the sources treat the outcome as unsettled.