China blocks SoftBank from buying ABB's robot business in China, the unit's largest market

China has prohibited SoftBank Group from acquiring the ABB Robotics business in China, ABB said on Nov. 5, confirming a Financial Times report. ABB agreed in October 2025 to sell its whole Robotics division to SoftBank for an enterprise value of $5.375 billion. SoftBank, which handles the regulatory approvals, told ABB that the Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review had blocked the China part; the FT reported that the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) told SoftBank it would block the deal.

The veto lands on the piece SoftBank can least afford to leave out. China is the robotics unit's largest market, and more than 90% of the robots it sells to Chinese customers are made in China, the FT reported; ABB has run a robot factory in Shanghai, built for $150 million, since 2022, according to the Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA. ABB says the two companies "are in close dialogue and are working constructively on the transaction." Read with the ruling, that leaves two paths: a smaller deal without the division's biggest market and its Shanghai plant, or a reversal from Beijing.

The security review stopped a deal that had passed antitrust

China's competition regulator had cleared the deal in February, the FT reported, and the European Commission had approved it too, according to Keystone-SDA. The objection came from the separate security review. People familiar with it told the FT that officials worried robotics data could leave China and train AI models, including those of OpenAI, in which SoftBank is a major investor. The review also examined ABB's Chinese supply chains and a request to keep some manufacturing capacity in the country, and possible requirements included keeping some intellectual property in China or spinning parts of the business off to Chinese owners.

People close to SoftBank had expected approval until the week before, the FT reported. The company is now trying to work out what went wrong and whether it can apply again; it declined to comment. The robot unit was central to Masayoshi Son's plans for physical AI.

ABB had planned to put part of the roughly $5.3 billion in proceeds into acquisitions, Keystone-SDA reported, and it has since agreed to buy British automation company Rotork for $5.5 billion, slightly more than the price of the robots it has not yet managed to sell.