Robotics · 5 November 2026 · 4 min read
SoftBank cannot buy ABB’s robots in China. The sale is not off
ABB said on 5 November that SoftBank had told it a Chinese security-review office had prohibited the acquisition of the ABB Robotics business in China. The October 2025 agreement was for an enterprise value of $5.375 billion. ABB did not say the whole sale is cancelled. It said the two companies are still working on the transaction. A newspaper’s motive is not in the statement.
ABB’s own note, dated 5 November, is short. In October 2025 it signed an agreement to sell its Robotics division to SoftBank for an enterprise value of $5.375 billion. The sale still needs regulatory approvals and the usual closing conditions, and SoftBank manages that process. Then the new fact. ABB confirms it has been informed by SoftBank that the Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review in China “has prohibited the acquisition of the ABB Robotics business in China.” The last line is that ABB and SoftBank “are in close dialogue and are working constructively on the transaction.” Prohibited in China is what the company was told. Working constructively is what it says is still happening. Neither sentence is a termination.
Headlines that the entire purchase is blocked go past that wording. The Wall Street Journal reported that SoftBank had passed on the Chinese office’s decision, that the deal was announced in October 2025, and that SoftBank declined to comment. The Journal also said China is ABB’s largest market for the robotics business. The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that planners would block the deal, and that one concern was robotics data leaving China to train artificial-intelligence models, including OpenAI’s, because SoftBank is an investor. That motive is the newspaper’s sources. It is not a line in ABB’s statement. The statement names the review office. It does not name a reason.
What is missing is the part a buyer would circle. No break fee. No new timetable. No figure for the China business on its own. No word on whether a sale of the robots outside China can still close. ABB’s robotics unit is industrial arms, the machines already bolting and packing on factory lines, not a humanoid programme. This is not the Fashion Inductor cell. A prohibition on the China piece can still wreck the price SoftBank thought it was paying. ABB has not said that it has.