SoftBank plans robotics and AI firm in the US to build data centers — aims for $100 billion valuation and an IPO this year

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is doubling down on the company’s AI investments with his plan to create and list Roze in the U.S. According to the Financial Times, this startup will focus on AI and robotics and is designed to help build data centers. More importantly, Son said that he’s aiming for a $100 billion valuation for the company and plans to list it as early as this year.

The Japanese telecom and investment firm is one of the biggest investors in AI and tech. It partnered with OpenAI and Oracle in early 2025 to invest $500 billion in the Stargate project, although it has since faced issues, and OpenAI has reportedly abandoned first-party data centers in favor of leasing compute. It’s also building a 10-gigawatt data center in Ohio, powered by a $33 billion natural gas plant funded by the Japanese government.

Aside from its AI investments, the company also poured $2 billion into Intel more than a year after the chipmaker announced disastrous results. While this isn’t a huge amount in the context of semiconductor fabs, it’s a vote of confidence in the direction that the company is taking and a crucial injection of funds at a time when Intel was struggling to right the ship.

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Son is known for taking huge risks on tech investments. For example, SoftBank acquired ARM Holdings in 2016 for $32 billion and still holds around 90% of the company despite listing it in 2023. Its current market cap is around $223 billion, meaning SoftBank made a windfall with this investment. In fact, the company used Arm shares as collateral for a $5 billion loan to invest in OpenAI. It also invested $20 million in Alibaba in the year 2000 and only exited the position in 2024, giving the company $8.5 billion — about 425 times its initial investment.

However, not all its bets were winners. Some of its large losses came from investments in WeWork and various tech startups, especially during the early years of its Vision Fund. In fact, the company lost 93% of its market value during the dotcom crash and was at risk of going bankrupt during that time. Despite that, the company is still going big on AI today, even though there were some concerns that it was turning into a bubble.

SoftBank’s massive investment in AI means that it’s prone to fluctuations in the fast-evolving industry. It showed a $50 billion loss in late 2025 when investors started asking about the profitability of the billions of dollars poured into AI infrastructure. Although the company has rebounded since then, it’s facing another challenge after news leaked that OpenAI missed internal targets for both revenue and active users.

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