SoftBank shares soar 13% after it agrees to buy ABB robotics unit for $5.4 billion (www.cnbc.com)

SoftBank agreed to buy ABB’s robotics division for $5.4 billion, sending its shares up about 13% and ending ABB’s plans to spin the unit off. The deal—subject to global regulatory approvals—was framed by SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son as a move into “Physical AI,” tying robotics to his ambition for “Artificial Super Intelligence” (ASI), which he describes as AI vastly more capable than humans. The acquisition complements SoftBank’s existing assets in the AI stack (ownership of Arm, a major stake in OpenAI, and portfolio companies like Graphcore), and comes alongside Graphcore’s planned $1.3 billion investment in India. For the AI/ML community this is significant because it accelerates vertical integration between industrial robotics, custom silicon and advanced AI models—opening paths to more tightly coupled hardware-software systems for on-device/edge inference, closed-loop control, and large-scale data collection from physical environments. Practically, SoftBank could leverage Arm and Graphcore tech plus model access to build specialized inference platforms and robot-specific models, speeding deployment of advanced automation in manufacturing, logistics and beyond. The move also raises integration and competition questions—regulatory scrutiny, supply-chain coordination and the challenge of melding legacy industrial robotics engineering with cutting-edge ML research.