The Robot Report Podcast
00:06:17 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe
[00:06:17] S1: So tell me tell me about the Hynes Center. I've never been there. Obviously, we've... Every event we've done has been at the the big convention center downtown. The Hynes is is located where? [00:06:25] S0: Yeah. So it's it's it's in downtown. It's not too far from, Fenway Park, actually. So but we were at the venue yesterday visiting it. So yes, it's a huge space. So we have a lot of cool opportunities to do different things, bring in different types of robotic systems and demos and networking opportunities. So a new venue for us, but it's gonna be bigger and better than ever. So looking forward to that. [00:06:45] S1: Cool. Yep. [00:06:46] S0: Onto the news of the week and we have you covered with all the latest news and information with our network of websites, including The Robot Report and Automated Warehouse. Make sure you follow us on social media. Make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletters, for both those brands so you never miss a beat. Alright. We met... We mentioned this, in in the show open and obviously, maybe the biggest story of the year, Mike. I think it's it's it's not overblowing it or overstating the importance of Chinese regulators blocking SoftBank's $5,400,000,000 acquisition of ABB Robot. This was first reported by the Financial Times. We have confirmed it with ABB that they are indeed, that the sale is on on pause. So you can check out the story by Brianna Wesseling on the Robot Report, but, pretty massive story here.
00:06:46 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:06:46] S0: Onto the news of the week and we have you covered with all the latest news and information with our network of websites, including The Robot Report and Automated Warehouse. Make sure you follow us on social media. Make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletters, for both those brands so you never miss a beat. Alright. We met... We mentioned this, in in the show open and obviously, maybe the biggest story of the year, Mike. I think it's it's it's not overblowing it or overstating the importance of Chinese regulators blocking SoftBank's $5,400,000,000 acquisition of ABB Robot. This was first reported by the Financial Times. We have confirmed it with ABB that they are indeed, that the sale is on on pause. So you can check out the story by Brianna Wesseling on the Robot Report, but, pretty massive story here. [00:07:37] S1: Yeah, it's been more than a year since ABB announced it signed the agreement to sell the division to the SoftBank Group for, as you stated, five point three seven five billion dollars. And it seems that China's Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review, that's a lot of words, has prohibited, you know, the acquisition in the country.
00:07:37 · Mike Oitzman, Steve Crowe
[00:07:37] S1: Yeah, it's been more than a year since ABB announced it signed the agreement to sell the division to the SoftBank Group for, as you stated, five point three seven five billion dollars. And it seems that China's Office of the Working Mechanism for Foreign Investment Security Review, that's a lot of words, has prohibited, you know, the acquisition in the country. [00:08:00] S0: Yeah. And I don't really understand... I mean, I I think I do. Right? I I think I understand why this was happening. I'm not sure I buy the reason that, everybody is sharing around the news here. I guess the concern... China is concerned about robotics data being transferred overseas and used by, I guess, SoftBank in this case to train its AI models. So obviously, SoftBank is a Japanese company. ABB does a ton of work in China. It's significantly grown its business in China. But I think what I don't understand is, you know, ABB is already an overseas company, right? ABB is a Swiss company, is that right? So what's stopping them from taking the data that they're already capturing from these deployments in China and using that to train their AI models already? You know, Again, I understand SoftBank is is a different company in a in a Japanese company, and there's political things between China and Japan forever. But the same problem already exists. Right? ABB can already transfer a lot of the data that it's capturing.
00:09:11 · Mike Oitzman
[00:09:11] S1: I mean, yeah, it's... Think it's a question for any country or or any organization in this world of physical AI is, you know, how... Is your information being used? And in many cases, we know that that, you know, a deployed fleet of robots, especially in a robots as a service situation, you know, every placement, every acquisition, every move, that information can come back and help make the entire fleet better. Right? There's that. And we know we've talked about security with so many cameras on so many devices. So I think you got something there and it comes down to how much of ABB's robot businesses in China. In 2025, according to the numbers, ABB Robotics booked $925,000,000 in orders from China, up from almost 700,000,000 in 2024. And I guess in q three, their business in China alone rose 32% according to the article. So, you know, the business is there is growing. It seems that, you know, ABB products are rock solid in industrial use cases, so that's great for ABB. And they still build a lot of robots in its Shanghai factory. That was the other requirement, right, is that domestic manufacturing. So they do have factories there. And so, again, we we we don't... We can't uncover all of the the political implement... Implications here, but there... There's something else, you know, under the surface going on here.
00:10:47 · Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman
[00:10:47] S0: Yeah. And and it doesn't mean that this deal is dead. Right? There's there's other things like... And I'm sure they're scrambling and going back to the negotiating table to try to figure this out. I think everybody probably, you know, from the ABB and SoftBank side obviously want this to happen. ABB at one point did have a plan to just spin off the robotics division, if you remember that. They were just going to spin it off into a standalone business unit. And then the SoftBank opportunity presented itself. But you you you think robotics is becoming a new political battleground? It certainly seems that way. [00:11:19] S1: Well, yes. I mean, just what... Even within the US government, right, in the last year, trying to block the import of Chinese robots. And so, unfortunately, yeah, maybe we're caught up in the middle of all of this. Sort of the, I don't know, what's a bad analogy, kids in a divorce, right? Where parents are fighting and where, as an industry, caught up between all of this. So I think that's unfortunate. In April, China prevented Meta from acquiring the AI startup Manus for $2,000,000,000 Manus was founded in China, but it had relocated to Singapore. And as we learned last week, Meta's now working with Chinese humanoid maker, Fourier, on a new meta specific humanoid robot in their robotics in in, I don't know, physical AI division. So, you know, so many things happen at so many levels, Steve. We live in an international world, and it's it's really hard and sort of sucks when these other sort of, overlying things, you know, impact business.
00:12:30 · Steve Crowe
[00:12:30] S0: Yeah. I mean, I I think about... I I always, in in these situations, look on the individual level. And, you know, people who have been at ABB in the robotics group for years and have built that and they're super successful and probably were positioned to make a lot of money from this deal, right, and change their lives and change their future and maybe even future generations of their families. It's a big moment for those folks. Right? And to see something like this potentially stop that from happening. I I don't know how they, again, on an individual level deal with this kind of stuff. I know how I would have a hard time, you know, mentally dealing with that kind of stuff. So that's where my mind immediately goes is to the Marc Zegers of the world. Right? Like someone who's been there for so long leading this stuff and to see just political BS potentially get in in in the way of of making something like this happen, kind of stinks. But again, yeah, you mentioned some of The US stuff, right, where the the section two thirty two report last week where The US Government says robotic imports are potentially a national security problem. But then again, how are we actually rebuilding The US robotics ecosystem and encouraging and supporting and promoting the building of more domestic robotics companies that are scaling products at a significant level rather than just, hey, ABB. Yes, you have US manufacturing as well. Can you scale that up? I mean, they're not a US company. So it's... Have the FCC already banning new foreign made advanced robotics devices as well, including mobile robots and humanoids and quadrupeds. Again, they're also citing supply chain vulnerabilities. So it's it's all it's all just craziness. And and, you know, it's unfortunate that we can't all just get along.