Hon Hai Technology Group (鴻海科技集團) yesterday said the company is to collaborate with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) to invest ￥14.5 billion (US$118.25 million) each in a robotics subsidiary of Japan’s Softbank Corp.
Hon Hai and Alibaba are to each hold ownership stakes of 20 percent in Softbank Robotics Holdings Corp, while Softbank is to control 60 percent of its subsidiary following the completion of the investment, Hon Hai said in a statement.
Under the terms of the agreement, the paid-in capital of Softbank Robotics would be ￥72.5 billion.
Photo: AFP
“Foxconn is pleased to be partnering with Softbank and Alibaba as part of our effort to drive the advancement of robotics engineering,” Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) said in the statement.
Hon Hai said that the strategic alliance with Alibaba and Softbank would facilitate the sale of Softbank’s Pepper robot and other robotic products on the global market.
“With Softbank’s advanced software and Internet technologies, and Foxconn’s hardware component integration, Pepper has grown rapidly... in the past year,” Gou told a Web-broadcasted press conference in Japan.
Gou said that robotics development is a strategic area of focus for Foxconn as the company continues to invest its capabilities in intelligent manufacturing.
Softbank founder and chief executive officer Masayoshi Son said he is excited to partner with Alibaba and Foxconn to face the challenge of going global with the bank’s robotics business.
“We will aim to be the No. 1 robotics company,” Son said.
Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma (馬雲) said he foresees robotics becoming a critical field that catalyzes technological breakthroughs in many sectors, such as public services, healthcare, research and in the home.
He said the alliance would pave the way for robotics research and development, stressing that with cutting-edge technologies, he thinks robotics can positively impact millions of lives.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS