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TOKYO (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp’s robotics unit announced on Wednesday a joint venture with Japanese electronics maker Iris Ohyama, as the conglomerate looks to juice up its robotics business.
SoftBank Robotics, whose Pepper robot is a symbol of the company and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son’s grand technological ambitions, is an outlier, as the group eschews operating businesses in favour of investing.
The joint venture, Iris Robotics, offered an ambitious forecast of 100 billion yen ($965 million) in sales by 2025, but provided little detail on future products at a press conference.
Household goods maker Iris Ohyama, which has a 51% stake in the venture, is becoming an increasingly potent force in Japan’s electronics sector as it moves steadily up the value chain.
SoftBank teams with home-goods maker Iris Ohyama for new robotics venture
You’d be forgiven for being underwhelmed by the output from SoftBank Robotics thus far. The firm’s best-known product to date is almost certainly Pepper, a humanoid robot designed for greeting and signage that grew out of it 2015 acquisition of French robotics company Aldebaran.
There’s also the matter of the investment firm’s acquisition and eventual sale of Boston Dynamics. The deal certainly went a ways toward accelerating the company’s go-to-market approach, but Boston Dynamics changed hands fairly quickly, when it was sold to Hyundai late last year (SoftBank maintains 20%).