China has blocked SoftBank Group’s planned acquisition of ABB’s robotics business, a deal valued at about $5.4 billion that was meant to anchor the Japanese investor’s push into robots powered by artificial intelligence.
ABB, the Swiss engineering group, confirmed that a Chinese government agency had stopped the transaction. SoftBank said an office under the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, had barred the purchase of ABB’s robotics operations in China. SoftBank added that the two companies were still talking and looking for a way to keep the deal alive. SoftBank’s shares fell sharply in Tokyo after the news.
Beijing has not published a formal explanation. According to the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the matter, officials were worried that data generated by robots working in Chinese factories could leave the country and end up training foreign AI models, including those of OpenAI, in which SoftBank is a major investor. Other reports said the decision was framed around national security.
Why the robotics unit matters
SoftBank agreed to buy the business in October 2025 at an enterprise value of about $5.375 billion, with completion expected in the middle to later part of 2026. The unit employs around 7,000 people and earned roughly $2.3 billion in revenue in 2024, about 7% of ABB’s total.
China is central to it. The country accounts for roughly 30% of ABB’s robotics sales, and the company runs major research, engineering and production operations there. That footprint is what gave Beijing leverage over a deal between a Japanese buyer and a Swiss seller.
For SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, the acquisition was a key piece of a bet on what the industry calls physical AI: software that can see, reason and act in the real world through machines such as factory arms, warehouse robots and humanoids. Owning a large installed base of industrial robots would have given SoftBank both hardware expertise and access to a steady stream of real-world operating data, which is exactly what regulators appear to have been concerned about.
The move also fits a wider pattern. Reuters described it as the second major technology deal China has blocked this year, after Meta was ordered in April to unwind its purchase of the AI startup Manus.
What it means for the region
The episode shows that industrial data is now treated as a strategic asset, not just a by-product of manufacturing. Governments increasingly see the information collected by machines on factory floors as raw material for AI, and they are prepared to use merger reviews to keep it at home.
For Asian manufacturers, including Bangladesh’s garment and electronics assemblers that are beginning to automate, the lesson is practical. Robots, sensors and factory software now often come with cloud connections that send operating data back to vendors. Questions about where that data is stored, who can use it and whether it can train someone else’s AI model are becoming part of normal procurement, much as they already are for banking and telecom systems.
It is also a reminder that global technology deals can now be stopped by any country where the target has meaningful operations. As Bangladesh courts foreign investment in electronics, data centres and software, its own regulators will face similar questions about cross-border data, and will need clear rules rather than case-by-case decisions to give investors certainty.
