The Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company, SoftBank Group invests $2.8 billion in AutoStore , an automation company in Norway.
The Japanese group SoftBank said that it will buy the stake from US private equity group Thomas H Lee Partners and Sweden’s EQT in a deal valuing AutoStore at $7.7bn.
All three shareholders will have representation on AutoStore’s board,
The telecoms-firm-turned-investment behemoth has stakes in some of Silicon Valley’s hottest start-ups through its $100 billion Vision Fund.
AutoStore, which was founded in 1996, is a robot technology company that invented and continues to pioneer Cube Storage Automation, the densest order-fulfilment solution in existence.
The company’s primary focus is to club software and hardware with human abilities to create the future of warehousing. The company has installations globally in over 30 countries in a wide range of industries.
All sales are distributed, designed, installed, and serviced by a network of qualified system integrators we call Partners.
The chairman and managing director of Autostore, Jim Carlisle, said:
“We believe the SoftBank partnership, in support of Karl Johan and the fantastic team at AutoStore, will help accelerate growth and unlock AutoStore’s massive potential.
“We are thrilled to welcome SoftBank as our new partner and are very excited for what the future holds for AutoStore.”
Softbank has been strengthening its technology portfolio in the past few years with the launch of its Vision Fund in 2017, which now claims assets under management worth more than $100bn.
Indeed, the Fund has invested aggressively in robotics, and Softbank itself has invented a humanoid robot called Pepper.
The chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp, Masayoshi Son, said:
”We view AutoStore as a foundational technology that enables rapid and cost-effective logistics for companies around the globe. We look forward to working with AutoStore to aggressively expand across end markets and geographies.”
