China blocks SoftBank’s $5.4B purchase of ABB’s robotics division (FT)
Partly confirmed
Status
- Claim
Partly confirmed
- Our reporting
- Medium confidence
- Importance
- 3 of 5
- Last verified
- 5 November 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra189 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5128 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon219 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7158 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 128 days before it.
Key facts
- Deal announced Oct 8, 2025 for $5.375B; closing had been targeted for mid-to-late 2026 subject to EU, China and US approval
- ABB’s robotics unit has large manufacturing in Shanghai
What happened
Written from Techmeme’s headline summary; the FT article is paywalled and we have not seen ABB’s or SoftBank’s statements.
Sources
2 sources from 2 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
2 sources: 2 press
Press
- FT: China blocks SoftBank’s purchase of ABB robotics unitft.com, press
- TechRepublic: SoftBank acquires ABB’s robotics business for $5.4B (2025)techrepublic.com, press
Changes
- Filed