A Chinese government office that reviews foreign investment for risks to national security has barred SoftBank Group from buying ABB's robotics business in China, the Swiss engineering company said on Thursday, Nov. 5. The office is called the Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review. ABB said it learned of the decision from SoftBank, which handles the government approvals for the deal.
ABB agreed in October 2025 to sell its whole robotics division to the Japanese investment group for $5.375 billion. It chose the sale over its earlier plan to list the division on the stock market as a separate company. The division makes industrial robots. It had about 7,000 workers when the deal was signed, and $2.3 billion in sales in 2024. SoftBank said the deal needed approval from regulators in places including the European Union, China and the United States, and both companies expected it to close in mid-to-late 2026. According to a news report, the European Commission had already approved it.
According to a news report, China is the division's largest market, and in 2022 ABB called China the world's largest robotics market. When ABB opened a $150 million robot factory in Shanghai that year, it said the factory supports over 90 percent of its sales there, under a strategy it called "in China, for China."
When it agreed to the deal in 2025, SoftBank said it was investing in four areas: AI chips, AI robots, AI data centers and energy. It said the ABB purchase would significantly strengthen its AI robotics business, and that it planned to pair ABB's robots with other robot companies it has backed, such as Skild AI and AutoStore. ABB did not give a reason for the decision. According to a news report, officials feared that data from making robots in China could end up abroad and be used to train AI models.
ABB says it and SoftBank are in close dialogue and are working constructively on the deal. According to a news report, ABB declined to say what the decision means for the sale as a whole. The same report says SoftBank is weighing whether to try again. It is not yet clear whether the rest of the division can change hands without its China business.