SoftBank Group is preparing to spin out a new robotics-and-AI company called Roze AI, with the goal of an initial public offering on a U.S. exchange in the second half of 2026 at a target valuation of around $100 billion. TechCrunch reported the plan on April 29; the Financial Times and CNBC followed with additional detail on April 30. Roze's mandate is to use autonomous robots to industrialize the construction of hyperscale data centers.
Roze is expected to bundle several existing SoftBank assets — energy, land, infrastructure positions, and the in-progress acquisition of ABB Robotics, one of the largest industrial automation suppliers in the world. If completed at the proposed valuation, it would be one of the largest AI-related IPOs ever, and it would convert SoftBank's piecemeal infrastructure investments into a single tradable security tied to the data-center buildout.
The strategic logic is the same logic powering the KKR-Helix launch the same week: AI's bottleneck is no longer model quality, it is the physical capacity to host the models. SoftBank is also one of the lead backers of the $500 billion Stargate joint venture with OpenAI and Oracle, which means Roze would have a captive customer for the data centers it builds. Internally, Financial Times sources say not every SoftBank executive is convinced — geopolitical risk and the aggressive timeline have created friction.
For learners: notice the pattern across this week's news. Two of the largest financial institutions in the world — KKR and SoftBank — are launching dedicated companies to build AI infrastructure. The labs get the attention; the picks-and-shovels get the capital. If you are an early-career engineer choosing where to apply, the data-center construction stack — power, robotics, networking, cooling — is hiring aggressively and is much less crowded than the model-research stack.