🤖 A robotics company that builds data centers — valued at $100 billion before it has earned a single dollar. SoftBank Group plans to spin off "Roze," a new entity bundling its AI, robotics, and data center infrastructure businesses, and float it on US markets as soon as this year, according to the Financial Times. With more than $30 billion already pledged to OpenAI and a $500 billion Stargate commitment on his shoulders, Masayoshi Son is asking global investors to bet on his biggest reinvention yet — turning SoftBank into an "AI company."

What Is Roze? — A Company That Builds Data Centers With Robots

On April 30, 2026, the Financial Times broke the story that SoftBank Group (SBG) is creating a new US-based entity called Roze, designed to consolidate the conglomerate's AI, robotics, and data center construction operations. The company is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) on US markets as early as the second half of 2026. CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg have all confirmed the plan.

The target valuation: roughly $100 billion (about ¥16 trillion at current rates near 160 yen to the dollar). If achieved, that would make Roze the largest US listing of a Japan-controlled company since Arm Holdings went public in 2023.

Roze's business model is simple to describe and unusual to execute. The core idea is to automate the physical construction of data centers using autonomous robots. The generative AI boom has sent global server demand soaring, but the rate at which data centers can actually be built — pouring concrete, racking servers, wiring up cooling systems — has lagged far behind. Roze aims to remove that bottleneck by deploying robotics on construction sites, then operating the resulting facilities as part of its own portfolio.

In other words, Roze is a physical AI company designed to build the infrastructure for AI. Not the chips that train models. Not the apps that consumers use. The boxes — full of power-hungry servers — that everything else runs on.

Three Acquisitions, One Story — ABB, Ampere, DigitalBridge

Roze isn't being built from scratch. It's a holding company designed to package up the pieces SoftBank has been quietly buying for the past two years.

1. ABB Robotics ($5.4 billion / about ¥860 billion) — In October 2025, SoftBank agreed to acquire the robotics division of Swiss heavy-electrical giant ABB. The unit operates in more than 50 countries, with over 500,000 industrial robots already installed. Closing is expected in mid-to-late 2026, pending regulatory approval.

2. Ampere Computing ($6.5 billion / about ¥1.04 trillion) — A US-based chip designer building Arm-architecture server CPUs. This brings the "silicon inside the box" in-house alongside Arm itself.

3. DigitalBridge-related assets ($3 billion / about ¥480 billion) — Data centers, communications towers, and fiber networks acquired from the US digital-infrastructure investor. This is the "land and buildings" base for Roze.

Layered on top: the large-scale Stargate data centers under development, energy assets across SoftBank's portfolio, and chip designs from Arm itself, the British semiconductor firm SoftBank still controls roughly 90 percent of. Bundle these pieces into one entity that builds, automates, and operates AI data centers, and you have something the US market can price as a single "AI infrastructure" stock.

Why Now? — The Cold Math of Funding Son's AI Spree

The aggressive timeline for Roze isn't ambition for its own sake. SoftBank faces real funding pressure.

Masayoshi Son has been stacking AI commitments at extraordinary speed:

  • OpenAI investment pledge: more than $30 billion (about ¥4.8 trillion)
  • Stargate Project: $500 billion (about ¥78 trillion) over four years for US AI infrastructure, with SoftBank and OpenAI as lead partners holding 40 percent stakes each
  • Ohio data center mega-project
  • Domestic AI foundation model: lead corporate partner in a Japanese government program targeting roughly ¥1 trillion in support over five years

To service those commitments, SoftBank reportedly signed a roughly $40 billion dollar-denominated loan in March 2026 — one of the largest such facilities ever arranged. Internal voices have been telling reporters the company is "approaching its leverage limits" and that asset monetization is no longer optional.

Read in this context, Roze isn't simply another subsidiary IPO. It's a funding vehicle to keep Son's broader AI strategy turning. By creating a publicly-traded security backed by his AI infrastructure assets, Son gives himself liquid collateral he can borrow against, exactly as he has done with Arm shares since their 2023 listing. It's the same playbook, scaled up.

There's also a longer game. OpenAI itself is preparing for a possible IPO at a reported $1 trillion valuation. If that happens, SoftBank's OpenAI stake becomes massively valuable on paper. Roze acts as the bridge to that future — a way to monetize today while the OpenAI lottery ticket matures.

Where Does Japan Fit? — GAFAM, BAT, and the View From Tokyo

To gauge what $100 billion means, it helps to compare with global AI peers (rough valuations as of April 2026):

US tech giants

  • NVIDIA: above $4 trillion
  • Microsoft: around $3.5 trillion
  • Apple: around $3.5 trillion
  • Alphabet (Google): around $2.5 trillion
  • Amazon: around $2 trillion
  • Meta: around $1.5 trillion

Chinese tech leaders (BAT)

  • Tencent: around $700 billion
  • Alibaba: around $350 billion
  • Baidu: around $40 billion

Private and pre-IPO AI companies

  • OpenAI: most recent funding implied around $500 billion; a $1 trillion IPO is reportedly being prepared
  • Anthropic: reportedly negotiating a $50 billion round at a $900 billion valuation
  • xAI (Musk): around $200 billion in recent rounds

A $100 billion Roze would land roughly in the middle of the Chinese BAT bracket — about one-fifth the size of OpenAI, one-ninth of Anthropic, and a small fraction of US hyperscalers. In Japanese terms, that puts Roze in the same league as SoftBank Group itself (around $190 billion market cap), Arm (around $180 billion), and Toyota (around $250 billion).

What matters more than the absolute number is the architecture. Roze would be a Japanese-controlled company earning revenue almost entirely in US dollars from US customers, listed on US markets. Its facilities would sit on American soil, its clients would be OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, and its shares would trade in New York. It's the Arm template again — and increasingly, it's the only path through which Japanese capital can be repriced at the scale global AI markets currently demand.

The Risks — "Overly Ambitious," Even From the Inside

The plan faces genuine obstacles.

1. Internal skepticism about the valuation. The FT reports that some senior SoftBank executives view both the $100 billion target and the timeline as overly ambitious. Roze has yet to generate meaningful revenue, and its valuation rests on assumed growth.

2. Geopolitical tension. The Trump administration's military strikes on Iran earlier in 2026 have kept oil prices elevated and dampened risk appetite in equity markets. PayPay, SoftBank's mobile-payments subsidiary, was forced to price its March 2026 NASDAQ IPO below its initial range for similar reasons. Roze could face the same defensive pricing.

3. A crowded IPO pipeline. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are all reportedly preparing major US listings in 2026. Roze will have to compete for the same pool of institutional capital.

4. Demand assumptions. Roze's valuation thesis assumes data center demand keeps expanding. A slowdown in AI spending — or delays in customer commitments — could collapse the story quickly.

5. SoftBank's own track record. Vision Fund losses, WeWork, and a long list of failed bets (most notoriously the AI pizza company Zume) sit heavy on investor memory. Even Son's admirers approach his biggest pitches with one hand on the exit.

To address these doubts, SoftBank plans to host an analyst day at a Texas data center facility in July 2026 — the first formal step in building IPO momentum.

A Bet on Reinvention

For years, Masayoshi Son has positioned SoftBank as the "platform provider for ASI" — Artificial Super Intelligence. Roze translates that abstract vision into something investors can actually price: a physical-AI company that builds and operates the infrastructure AI runs on.

If it works, Roze becomes the largest Japan-anchored US listing since Arm and triggers a reassessment of SoftBank Group itself. If it falters, doubts about Son's entire AI strategy will harden quickly.

The Roze IPO is also a broader market test. Can the AI infrastructure narrative carry a $100 billion debut at a moment of geopolitical stress and crowded supply? July's analyst day and an eventual S-1 filing will tell us.

In Japan, Son's audacious bets always attract a mix of admiration and skepticism. How are massive AI infrastructure investments perceived where you are? Is this the foundation of a generational tech boom — or the last leg of a bubble before it pops? The honest answer, today, is that nobody knows yet.

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