When Beijing halted SoftBank’s $5.4 billion takeover of ABB’s robotics division on Thursday, the obvious next question was what the two companies would do with a signed deal that a regulator had just severed. Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter, that SoftBank and ABB are now exploring a carve-out: separating ABB Robotics’ Chinese business into an entity with different ownership so the rest of the transaction can proceed. Reuters picked the report up, noting that SoftBank did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours and ABB declined to comment.
The structure would be familiar to anyone who has watched multinational companies bend around export controls in recent years. A carve-out would set up a separate company for the China unit — Bloomberg’s sources describe the intent as an attempt to assuage Beijing’s worries about safeguarding its data and technology amid the global race toward artificial intelligence. ABB’s Shanghai manufacturing and development facility, which has benefited from state support and local government backing, is precisely the asset both sides are anxious about: the robot data it generates was the FT’s reported reason for the block in the first place.
ABB’s own update, issued the day after the prohibition, says only that the company was informed by SoftBank that China’s Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review had prohibited the acquisition of the robotics business in China, and that the two companies are “in close dialogue and are working constructively on the transaction.” Neither company has publicly confirmed the carve-out plan.
What the carve-out would actually separate
China is not a side market for ABB Robotics. It is the largest single market, accounting for roughly 30% of the robotics business, with about 30 local companies, around 15,000 employees across nearly 130 cities and channels reaching close to 700 online and offline outlets. Anything that severs that business from the rest of the division is a major operation, not a licensing tweak — and Bloomberg’s sources are careful to say the efforts may fail, with no certainty of a deal.
ABB is also weighing alternatives, including finding another buyer for the China business altogether. Bloomberg reported a potential standalone valuation of $2 billion to $3 billion for the unit — a meaningful slice of the $5.4 billion whole. A further fallback would be returning to the original plan before SoftBank entered: a spinoff and listing of the robotics division, once pencilled in for Switzerland and Sweden. Sources told Bloomberg that option looks particularly complicated now — the divestment deal was already signed, and markets are hardly welcoming to robotics listings this month.
The timing is punishing from ABB’s side. The company had expected the sale to close before the end of the year, and the proceeds were earmarked for further acquisitions. Citigroup analyst Martin Wilkie estimates the block cuts ABB’s available acquisition firepower roughly in half, to about $5 billion. ABB shares slipped more than 5% over the week; SoftBank’s fell 11% in Tokyo on Friday amid the broader tech rout.
The template this creates
Step back from the deal mechanics and the pattern is the story. This is the second deal blocked by China this year, after Beijing ordered Meta in April to unwind its more than $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus. Same mechanism, same logic: frontier-technology assets with a data dimension do not change hands on paper alone anymore.
Read together with the American side of the street — where the FCC’s Covered List now requires national-security sign-off before foreign-built connected robots can even be authorised for sale — the robotics industry is being split into jurisdictional zones in slow motion. In the old world, a Swiss industrial group sold its division to the highest bidder and the robots shipped wherever customers were. In this one, a deal between a Japanese buyer and a Swiss seller can be vetoed by a third country because the robots are* made* in that country, and the fix is not a price adjustment but a corporate amputation.
That carve-outs are now the standard resolution tool matters beyond this deal. They can rescue a transaction; what they cannot do is re-create a unified robotics industry. Every future deal of this scale will now be written with a China annex, a US annex and a carve-out map from day one — because Thursday’s block and Saturday’s rescue plan have shown everyone what happens when you don’t.
For New Zealand manufacturers watching robot purchases the way they now watch chip supply: the fragmentation is reaching down to your level too. Vendors will carve their supply and support chains along the same lines, and the days of a single global service network quietly backing every robot arm are ending — a point we made when Toyota restructured its robotics division, and which now looks less like one company’s choice and more like the industry’s direction of travel.
Sources: Bloomberg, Reuters via Euronext, The Robot Report, swissinfo.ch. Deal-carve-out details per Bloomberg’s reporting, citing unnamed people familiar with private talks; neither company has confirmed the plan.
