SoftBank to Spin Out Roze AI in $100B U.S. IPO — Robots Will Build AI Data Centers

SoftBank Group will create and float a new U.S.-listed AI and robotics company called Roze, the Financial Times reported on April 29, 2026, with founder Masayoshi Son targeting a valuation of about $100 billion and an IPO as early as the second half of this year. The new entity will use autonomous robots to physically build AI data centers — a vertical integration play that bundles ABB Robotics, Ampere Computing and DigitalBridge into a single public vehicle.

What Happened

According to the FT report and follow-up coverage at CNBC, TechCrunch and The Japan Times, Roze will be U.S.-incorporated and U.S.-listed, with its purpose narrowly defined: automate the construction and ongoing operation of large-scale AI data centers using robotics. SoftBank executives are preparing an analyst day in July 2026 at a Texas data center site to drum up institutional interest, and have hired KPMG to prepare the IPO financials and S-1 documentation.

The vehicle is unusual because it folds multiple recent SoftBank acquisitions under a single ticker. Reporting consistently names three cornerstone assets: SoftBank’s $5.4 billion agreement to buy ABB Robotics from ABB Group (announced in 2025); Ampere Computing, the Arm-server-CPU vendor SoftBank bought for $6.5 billion; and a roughly $3 billion stake in data-center infrastructure manager DigitalBridge. SoftBank-owned land, energy assets and existing data-center sites are also expected to roll into Roze.

Key Details

• Target valuation: $100 billion at IPO — placing Roze among the largest U.S. tech listings ever attempted at debut.
• Target listing window: Second half of 2026, with possible slippage to 2027 according to people familiar with the planning.
• Cornerstone asset: ABB Robotics — one of the world’s four largest industrial-robotics suppliers, alongside Fanuc, Yaskawa and KUKA.
• Other folded assets: Ampere Computing ($6.5 billion acquisition) and DigitalBridge data-center stake ($3 billion).
• Strategic context: Sits inside Son’s broader Stargate alliance with OpenAI and Oracle, the previously announced $500 billion U.S. AI-infrastructure programme.
• Underwriter prep: KPMG hired to ready the financials; July analyst day scheduled at a Texas data center site.

What Industry Watchers Are Saying

Reaction has been split along familiar SoftBank lines. Bulls point out that vertically integrating compute (Ampere), robots (ABB) and physical sites (DigitalBridge) is the logical answer to the bottleneck the industry is hitting in 2026: data-center buildout speed, not chip supply. Bears note the $100 billion target is roughly the value the entire ABB Group commanded before the robotics carve-out, raising questions about whether the IPO is priced more on Son’s narrative than on combined trailing revenue.

The Financial Times reports that several SoftBank executives are themselves uncomfortable with the valuation and the H2 2026 timing, citing geopolitical risk in the Middle East and the still-unproven thesis that on-site humanoid and industrial robots can meaningfully accelerate gigawatt-scale data-center construction. Analysts at Yahoo Finance and Benzinga noted that ABB Group shares ticked up around 2% on the disclosure, suggesting the market views the asset transfer as accretive for ABB shareholders even before the IPO prices.

What This Means for the AI Industry

If Roze prices at $100 billion in 2026, it would be the first pure-play “AI infrastructure construction” public company — a category SoftBank is effectively inventing. For competitors building hyperscale capacity (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, plus newer entrants like CoreWeave and Nebius), Roze becomes a potential supplier and potential rival simultaneously. For ABB Group, the carve-out frees the parent to focus on electrification while letting robotics ride the AI capex wave under U.S. listing rules.

For developers and AI engineers downstream, the practical impact is indirect but meaningful: faster, cheaper data-center buildouts compress the gap between announcing a model and serving it at scale. The Stargate programme already promised $500 billion of U.S. AI capacity over multiple years; if Roze can shave even 10–20% off the labor and timeline cost of that buildout, it materially changes the unit economics of frontier-model serving.

What’s Next

The next public milestones are the July 2026 Texas analyst day, the formal S-1 filing (expected late summer if the H2 2026 listing target holds), and clarity on which executive will lead Roze day-to-day — SoftBank has not named a CEO publicly. Watch for any update on the ABB Robotics acquisition close: that transaction must complete before the assets can be folded into the IPO vehicle. SoftBank itself has issued no formal press release as of publication, declining to comment on the FT report.

Sources

• TechCrunch — First English-language coverage of the FT scoop.
• CNBC — Confirmation and U.S. financial-press framing of the IPO target.
• The Japan Times — Tokyo-side coverage including SoftBank executive scepticism.
• Tech Startups — Detailed asset breakdown (ABB, Ampere, DigitalBridge).
• Yahoo Finance — Market reaction summary.
• Benzinga — ABB stock movement and additional analyst commentary.