SoftBank Group (SOBKY), a Japanese investment firm betting heavily on artificial intelligence, has secured a $1.75 billion-equivalent loan package to help finance its $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB's industrial robotics business. The financing includes U.S. dollar and euro term loans priced at a margin of 4.25 percentage points above their respective benchmarks, with the debt offered at 98.5 cents on the dollar. The pricing came at the wider end of the initial range, suggesting lenders required relatively strong returns to support SoftBank's latest AI-related investment.

Investor demand appeared stronger in the U.S. leveraged loan market, prompting the lending group to increase the dollar portion of the financing by $200 million to $800 million. At the same time, the euro tranche was reduced to 825 million, equivalent to about $940 million. BNP Paribas, a French banking group, Goldman Sachs Group , a U.S. investment bank, HSBC Holdings , a global banking group, and Mizuho Financial Group, a Japanese financial institution, were among the banks managing the transaction.

The financing supports SoftBank's acquisition of the robotics unit from ABB, a Swiss conglomerate that had previously planned to separate the business. SoftBank is positioning the purchase as part of its broader investment in artificial intelligence-powered robotics, while ABB is expected to concentrate more heavily on areas such as electrification. Investors may view that strategy as increasingly relevant as OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company, and Meta Platforms , the U.S. technology company behind major digital platforms, continue committing substantial capital to data centers, contributing to rising demand for electrification infrastructure and AI-linked financing.