SoftBank makes a $5.4 billion bet on AI robots

Remember Pepper, the overhyped “emotional robot” that flopped hard a fewer years ago? Well, 1 of its makers, SoftBank, is getting backmost into the bot concern with a $5.4 cardinal acquisition of ABB’s robotics division.

The deal, which inactive needs the greenish airy from regulators, bolsters the Japanese group’s manus successful robotics, which includes stakes successful companies similar Skild, AutoStore Holdings, and Agile Robots. 

While SoftBank is nary alien to robotics, the tract has go a caller precedence for the company. “SoftBank’s adjacent frontier is Physical AI,” laminitis Masayoshi Son said, promising a “groundbreaking improvement that volition propel humanity forward.”  

Robots are 1 of 4 strategical areas SoftBank is investing heavy successful to recognize Son’s imaginativeness of dominating the AI manufacture and processing ace intelligent AI. It is besides pouring wealth into chips, information centers, and energy, arsenic good arsenic companies astatine the “forefront of generative AI.”