SoftBank drops $500M on Agile Robots a week after China kills ABB deal

SoftBank isn't waiting around. The Japanese giant led a funding round of about $500 million in Agile Robots, the Munich company founded in 2018 by researchers from the German Aerospace Center. SoftBank was in early talks to anchor a raise of around $800 million and could put in more than $300 million, according to Cryptopolitan. It already knew the terrain: it led Agile's $220 million Series C in 2021, the round that made the company Germany's first robotics unicorn.

Agile builds the software and the hardware for its machines, and it has more than 3,200 employees across Germany, China and India. Revenue doubled from the year before to about $230 million (200 million euros). In November 2025 it launched Agile ONE, its first humanoid, aimed at factory work like running machines, picking and placing items, and handling small parts with care. Full production was planned for a new plant in Bavaria in early 2026.

Nvidia announced its plan to invest at the Invest in Germany Summit in October, during CEO Jensen Huang's trip to Berlin. Cryptopolitan reported that medical-software maker Avelios, audio firm Mirelo and satellite builder Reflex Aerospace were also on the list. At the same event, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged the country's manufacturers to share their industrial data with AI systems. Nvidia is working directly with Agile too: CEO Zhaopeng Chen says the company plans to build 1,000 to 2,000 small humanoids next year using Nvidia's Jetson Thor computer and its GR00T AI model, with Stanford University and ETH Zurich named as possible buyers. The units stand 1.4 meters tall and weigh about 34 kilograms, light enough for lab researchers to handle safely.

The timing is the story. On November 5, ABB said China's National Development and Reform Commission had told SoftBank it would not approve the transfer of ABB's China robotics operations, stalling the $5.4 billion deal the two sides signed in October 2025. Chinese officials reportedly worried that robotics data would be sent abroad to train AI models. It was the second foreign purchase Beijing blocked this year — Meta was earlier ordered to undo its buy of AI startup Manus.

The market punished SoftBank fast. Its shares fell more than 11% in Tokyo the day after China's refusal, and it got more expensive to insure its debt: the five-year price hit 466 basis points, the highest since October 2022 and the highest in four years.

Founder Masayoshi Son keeps pushing chips and robots anyway. SoftBank has closed a new $30 billion investment in OpenAI, lifting its stake to about 13%, and in August it was reported that Son is in talks to take a majority stake in OpenAI-backed 1X Technologies at a value near $6 billion. The wider pot is growing: $27.6 billion went into robotics and physical AI globally in 2025, more than twice the year before.