SoftBank reportedly plans to spin off $100B data center construction venture

SoftBank Group Corp. reportedly plans to launch a publicly traded data center construction venture called Roze.

The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times broke the news late Thursday. They cited sources as saying that SoftBank hopes to take Roze public by year’s end at a valuation of about $100 billion. The stock listing is expected to take place on a US exchange.

Roze will reportedly focus on building data centers optimized for artificial intelligence workloads. According to the Financial Times, the venture will use robots to optimize the construction workflow.

Roze is described as a spinoff, which hints that it will incorporate assets from SoftBank’s existing businesses. The Thursday reports didn’t specify what assets the venture might absorb.

One likely candidate is SB Energy Inc., a SoftBank unit that specializes in building data centers and renewable energy infrastructure. In January, OpenAI Group PBC entrusted SB Energy with the construction of a 1.2-gigawatt Stargate campus. Earlier, the SoftBank unit built a 900-megawatt solar park near Austin to power a local Google Cloud data center cluster.

The company is also active in the robotics market, the other segment that is said to be a focus for Roze. Last year, SoftBank inked a $5.4 billion deal to acquire the robotics business of industrial giant ABB Group. The deal bought it half a dozen robotic arms optimized for welding, which is one of the tasks that Roze might seek to automate during data center construction projects.

Construction material transport is another task that can theoretically be automated.

Startup Atoms Inc. sells a device that adds autonomous driving features to haul trucks, large vehicles used to move cargo to and from construction sites. Other companies are using robots to automate tasks such as concrete removal.

SoftBank is working to automate not only data center construction but also day-to-day facility management tasks. Last year, the company revealed plans to build robots that can install servers, inspect existing machines for faults and replace them if necessary. The robots in the works include autonomous forklifts.

One of the main reasons robots aren’t widely used for data center maintenance today is that they struggle to manage server cables. To address that challenge, SoftBank has developed a cableless server rack. The chassis replaces power cables with metal bars and uses custom, easily maintainable network connectors instead of fiber-optic wires.

SoftBank plans to test the technology in a data center that it’s currently building on Japan’s northernmost Hokkaido island. It’s possible the project will be folded into Roze.

According to the Financial Times, the timing of the SoftBank spinoff’s stock market listing and its $100 billion valuation target could change. Some executives reportedly believe that the current roadmap may be too ambitious.

SoftBank might be planning to use the proceeds from the offering to make more AI investments. The company bought a $30 billion stake in OpenAI Group PBC last year and made a multibillion-dollar follow-on investment this past February. Around the same time, it inked a $4.04 billion deal to buy DigitalBridge Group Inc., a private equity firm with stakes in multiple data center companies.

Photo: SoftBank