Recently, SoftBank Group’s annual shareholder meeting disclosed two major industry news, instantly igniting global interest in humanoid robots and industrial automation.
Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank Group, has publicly confirmed that SoftBank’s self-developed humanoid robot products have now entered the factory mass production stage and will be officially released globally in the near future. At the same time, its previously announced US$5.375 billion (approximately RMB 39 billion) acquisition of ABB’s robotics business will be completed in mid-to-late 2026. The two-line layout is aimed at leading the global robotics field.
Many industry practitioners still remember that the Pepper launched by SoftBank in the early years to accompany the robot commercialization process failed, which once caused the market to question SoftBank’s ability to lay out the robot track.
This time, Masayoshi Son has obviously learned from past experiences and lessons and chosen the dual parallel route of “self-developed consumer-grade humanoid robots + acquisition of leading industrial robots” to make up for his shortcomings in hardware technology, supply chain, and implementation scenarios.
As one of the four major families of industrial robots in the world, ABB Robotics’ technical strength and industry status are comparable to those of Fanuc, Yaskawa Electric, and KUKA. In 2024, the single business sales revenue of this segment will reach 2.3 billion U.S. dollars. The implementation scenarios cover all industrial scenarios such as automobile manufacturing, logistics and warehousing, and precision processing. It not only has mature global sales and service channels, but also masters a number of core technologies in the field of industrial motion control, which can just make up for SoftBank’s shortcomings in physical robot hardware.
For ABB Group, the divestiture of the robot business has actually been planned for a long time. The 12.1% profit margin of this segment is far lower than the 16%-18% profit level of the group’s core electrification business, and the synergy with the group’s main business is weak. Spinning off and selling this business can return huge amounts of funds and further focus on the high-margin power automation main business, which is in line with the group’s long-term development strategy.
The core appeal of SoftBank’s choice to acquire ABB’s robotics business is to connect the industrial physical execution terminal with its long-established super AI large model to achieve the deep integration of “general artificial intelligence + physical robots”. Masayoshi Son bluntly stated at the shareholders’ meeting that after the integration is completed, SoftBank will become the world’s overwhelmingly number one robotics company.
On the other hand, the self-developed humanoid robot has entered the mass production stage, which also marks SoftBank’s official entry into the consumer-grade embodied intelligence track.
The global humanoid robot industry is currently in the early stages of commercialization. Morgan Stanley’s latest industry report has raised market expectations. It is expected that China’s humanoid robot shipments will reach 50,000 units in 2026, and the global humanoid robot market will exceed US$15 billion in 2030.
At present, domestic and overseas players such as Tesla Optimus, Yushu Technology, and UBTECH have gathered to lay out the track, and the mass-produced brands that SoftBank will launch will also directly intensify the level of competition in the industry.
From the perspective of industrial chain logic, SoftBank holds a large amount of investment targets related to AI computing power, and combined with ABB’s mature industrial robot parts supply chain system, it can quickly reduce the production cost of core components of humanoid robots and specifically solve the three major pain points common in the current industry: insufficient battery life, insufficient motion control accuracy, and weak interaction capabilities in complex environments.
After the relevant news was disclosed, the capital market also quickly gave feedback. SoftBank’s U.S. stocks rose slightly during the session. Supply chain stocks related to harmonic reducers, servo motors, and sensors in the domestic A-share market also experienced simultaneous changes. The market generally gave positive expectations for SoftBank’s dual-line layout.
