(April 30): SoftBank Group Corp.plans to establish and float a standalone AI robotics and data centre company called Roze in the US, the Financial Times reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
The Japanese investment firm aims to list Roze as soon as this year at a targeted valuation of US$100 billion ($128 billion), the FT reported. Founder Masayoshi Son is driving the effort, aimed at offsetting the tens of billions of dollars that his firm is committing in the AI sphere.
Son’s envisioned spinoff would run up against growing concerns about the sustainability of a historic global data centre buildout led by the likes of Meta Platforms Inc and Amazon.com Inc. SoftBank has placed a giant bet on OpenAI in particular, while trying to mold Arm Holdings Plc into a potential competitor to Nvidia Corp.
The Japanese group has piled on debt as Son seeks to position himself as a linchpin in the global AI boom. His company recently committed an additional US$30 billion to the ChatGPT developer after having previously put in more than that same amount. Last month, SoftBank signed a US$40 billion loan — its largest-ever lending facility solely denominated in dollars — in part for its most recent follow-on investment.
SoftBank representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some within the company harbour doubts about Roze’s valuation and IPO timeline in part because of the uncertainty surrounding the Middle East conflict, the FT said. Details including the stake in Roze to be floated have yet to be finalised, the newspaper reported.
See also: Anthropic considering funding offers at over US$900 bil value — Bloomberg
Still, SoftBank has stepped up investments in AI in past months.
The company signed a US$3 billion deal to buy private equity firm DigitalBridge Group Inc, whose portfolio includes digital infrastructure companies such as AtlasEdge, DataBank, Switch and Vantage Data Centers. Prior to that announcement, SoftBank bought US chip designer Ampere Computing LLC for US$6.5 billion and announced a US$5.4 billion acquisition of ABB Ltd’s robotics unit.
SoftBank, which had pledged to shepherd a US$500 billion Stargate push alongside OpenAI, Oracle Corp and Abu Dhabi’s MGX to build data centres in the US, separately pursued a deal of around US$50 billion for data center operator Switch, but the talks were halted earlier this year.
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