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| ABB Ltd | |
|---|---|
| Company information | |
| Type | Public company (multinational) |
| Traded as | SIX: ABBN, NYSE: ABB, Nasdaq Stockholm: ABB |
| Industry | Electrical equipment, robotics, industrial automation |
| Founded | 5 January 1988 (merger of ASEA and BBC Brown Boveri) |
| Predecessors | ASEA (Sweden, 1883), BBC Brown Boveri (Switzerland, 1891) |
| Headquarters | Zurich, Switzerland |
| Key people | Morten Wierod (CEO, since August 2024), Peter Voser (Chairman) |
| Revenue | ~$32.9 billion (2024) |
| Employees | ~110,000 (2024) |
| Business areas | Electrification, Motion, Process Automation, Robotics & Discrete Automation |
| Robotics installed base | 500,000+ industrial robots cumulative |
| Website | abb.com |
ABB Ltd is a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and one of the largest industrial technology companies in the world. The company operates in roughly 100 countries, employs around 110,000 people, and reported record revenues of about $32.9 billion in 2024. ABB is best known for power and electrification equipment, motion and drives, process automation systems, and its industrial robotics business, which is consistently ranked among the global "Big Four" robotics suppliers alongside Japan's FANUC, Japan's Yaskawa, and Germany's KUKA.
ABB was formed on 5 January 1988 through the merger of two old European industrial powers: ASEA of Sweden, founded in 1883 in Vasteras, and BBC Brown Boveri of Switzerland, founded in 1891 in Baden. The combined company entered the world stage as ASEA Brown Boveri, with revenues around $15 billion and roughly 160,000 employees on day one. Its robotics arm traces back even earlier to ASEA's 1974 launch of the IRB 6, the world's first all-electric, microprocessor-controlled industrial robot, which is widely considered a foundational machine in the history of industrial automation.
In the modern era, ABB Robotics has installed more than 500,000 industrial robots worldwide, supplies almost every major automotive original equipment manufacturer, and has pushed deep into artificial intelligence through partnerships with NVIDIA Isaac and Omniverse, the acquisition of Spanish autonomous mobile robot maker ASTI in 2021, the acquisition of Swiss visual SLAM startup Sevensense in 2024, and a co-development partnership with Covariant for AI-powered picking. In October 2025, ABB announced that it would divest its Robotics division to SoftBank Group for $5.375 billion, a deal expected to close in mid-to-late 2026 and that effectively replaces an earlier plan to spin off Robotics as a separately listed company.
ASEA, short for Allmanna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (General Swedish Electrical Limited Company), was founded in 1883 in Vasteras, Sweden, by Ludvig Fredholm. It grew from electrical lighting and dynamos into one of Europe's leading suppliers of electric motors, generators, transformers, and power transmission systems. ASEA built the world's first three-phase transmission line in 1893 and was central to the electrification of Swedish industry, hydroelectric power, and railways throughout the 20th century. The company also became a nuclear player through Asea-Atom and an automation pioneer through its robotics and drives divisions.
In 1974, ASEA introduced the IRB 6, the world's first all-electric, microcomputer-controlled industrial robot. Designed by Bjorn Weichbrodt, Ove Kullborg, Bengt Nilsson, and Herbert Kaufmann, the IRB 6 used an Intel 8008 8-bit microprocessor for control, offered a 6 kg payload across five axes, and adopted an anthropomorphic configuration that became the template for modern articulated robots. The first IRB 6 was delivered in 1974 to Magnusson i Genarp, an engineering shop in southern Sweden, for grinding and polishing pipe bends. Roughly 1,900 units were sold between 1975 and 1992, and the IRB designation has remained ABB's industrial robot brand for more than fifty years.
Brown, Boveri & Cie was founded in Baden, Switzerland, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri. The Swiss firm specialized in heavy electrotechnical equipment including steam turbines, large generators, and high-voltage transmission gear. BBC built much of the early infrastructure for European railway electrification, supplied turbines for some of the first commercial gas turbine power plants in the 1930s and 1940s, and later became a leader in high-voltage direct current transmission and power semiconductors. By the 1980s, BBC was one of the largest electrical engineering groups on the European continent.
On 10 August 1987, ASEA and BBC announced a merger of equals. Each parent retained 50 percent of the new entity, ASEA Brown Boveri (later shortened to ABB), with headquarters in Zurich and operational anchors in Vasteras and Baden. Operations began on 5 January 1988. The combined company was an immediate global heavyweight, with about $15 billion in revenue, 160,000 employees, and businesses spanning power generation, transmission and distribution, electric transportation, and industrial automation including robotics.
Under first CEO Percy Barnevik, ABB pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy: roughly fifteen deals in the first year alone, including Flakt of Sweden, Italian contractor Sadelmi/Cogepi, and Danish railway maker Scandia-Randers. In 1989 ABB acquired roughly forty additional companies, including Westinghouse Electric's transmission and distribution business in the United States. By the mid-1990s ABB had become the largest power equipment company in the world.
The early 2000s were difficult for ABB. The company faced asbestos-related liabilities inherited from its U.S. boiler subsidiary Combustion Engineering, and the post dot-com capex bust hit its order book. ABB sold off non-core businesses including its nuclear power division and building systems unit. By the mid-2000s, ABB had refocused around power and automation, with robotics increasingly highlighted as a growth engine. In 2010, ABB acquired Baldor Electric for around $4.2 billion, deepening its position in low-voltage drives and motors. In 2017 it bought GE's industrial solutions division for $2.6 billion. In 2018 ABB sold its Power Grids business to Hitachi for around $11 billion in a deal that closed in 2020 and created Hitachi Energy, marking a clear pivot toward automation, electrification, motion, and robotics as the company's core.
In 2020 the ABB board appointed Bjorn Rosengren, formerly of Sandvik, as CEO. Rosengren restructured ABB into around twenty divisions inside four business areas (Electrification, Motion, Process Automation, Robotics & Discrete Automation) under a decentralized operating model. He also led the late-2022 Shanghai robotics mega factory opening.
In August 2024, Morten Wierod, who had previously led the Motion business area, succeeded Rosengren as CEO. Wierod reaffirmed ABB's financial targets and continued to emphasize artificial intelligence, industrial electrification, and energy efficiency. Under his tenure the company has logged record revenue, expanded its NVIDIA partnership, and made the surprise October 2025 announcement that ABB would sell its Robotics division to SoftBank Group for $5.375 billion rather than spin it off as a publicly listed company.
ABB organizes its operations into roughly twenty divisions grouped under four business areas. The Robotics business is part of Robotics & Discrete Automation, which represented around 7 percent of group revenue in 2024.
| Business area | 2024 contribution | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Electrification | Largest segment, ~$32.85B group revenue level reflects this dominance | Low- and medium-voltage products, smart buildings, e-mobility, data center power |
| Motion | Stable | Electric motors, generators, drives, integrated digital powertrains |
| Process Automation | Mid-tier | DCS systems, measurement, marine, mining, oil and gas, pulp and paper |
| Robotics & Discrete Automation | ~$2.3B (about 7% of group), 12.1% Operational EBITA margin in 2024 | Industrial robots, cobots, AMRs, machine automation, B&R |
The Robotics & Discrete Automation business area employs roughly 7,000 people. ABB's machine automation activities also include the B&R Industrial Automation business, acquired in 2017, which contributes programmable logic controllers, drives, and industrial PCs.
ABB Robotics is one of the four leading global suppliers of industrial robots, a group commonly called the "Big Four" along with FANUC, Yaskawa, and KUKA. Reports vary on annual share, with FANUC typically cited near 17 percent, ABB and KUKA roughly tied around 13 percent each, and Yaskawa around 12 percent in recent years. ABB has installed more than 500,000 industrial robots since 1974, an installed base that places it among the most pervasive automation suppliers in manufacturing, and the company's eleven robot families span more than 60 variants in the current 2025 catalog.
ABB's industrial robots are sold under the IRB (Industrial RoBot) brand, which has been used continuously since the original IRB 6 in 1974. The lineup ranges from very small electronics handling robots like the IRB 1100 and IRB 120 up to the heavy-payload IRB 8700 family, which can handle up to 1,000 kg with the wrist down (and roughly 800 kg in standard configuration). Collaborative robots are sold under three brands: YuMi for the original dual-arm cobot, GoFa for general-purpose six-axis cobots, and SWIFTI for high-speed cobots that operate at industrial speeds.
| Family | Type | Payload (kg) | Reach (m) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IRB 120 | Small articulated | 3 | 0.58 | Compact, lightest in lineup, electronics and material handling |
| IRB 1100 / 1100 Lite+ | Small articulated | 4 | 0.475 to 0.58 | Smallest reach in family, electronics assembly |
| IRB 1200 / 1200 Gen 2 | Small articulated | 5 to 7 | 0.7 to 0.9 | Material handling, machine tending |
| IRB 1300 | Compact, high payload | up to 17 | up to 1.4 | Class-leading lift in compact size |
| IRB 4600 | Mid-size | 20 to 60 | 2.05 to 2.55 | Welding, material handling |
| IRB 6700 | Large | 150 to 300 | 2.6 to 3.2 | 7th generation large robot, automotive workhorse |
| IRB 6750S | Shelf-mounted | up to 350 | (varies) | High-density shelf installations |
| IRB 6760 | Press tending | (press-tuned) | (press-tuned) | Up to 15 strokes per minute |
| IRB 7600 | Heavy | up to 630 | up to 3.5 | Spot welding, heavy material handling |
| IRB 8700 | Heaviest | up to 1,000 wrist-down | up to 4.2 | Largest in ABB lineup, single motor per axis design |
| IRB 920 | New compact (2025) | up to 6 | 0.45 | Short-arm configuration for confined spaces |
| IRB 14000 (YuMi) | Dual-arm cobot | 0.5 per arm | 0.5 | First true human-collaborative robot, 7 axes per arm |
| CRB 15000 (GoFa) | Cobot | 5 to 12 | up to 1.62 | 6-axis, joint torque sensors, IP54 |
| CRB 1100 (SWIFTI) | High-speed cobot | 4 | 0.475 or 0.58 | Up to 5 m/s TCP speed, 0.01 mm repeatability |
ABB's YuMi, formally the IRB 14000, was unveiled at the Hannover Fair on 15 April 2015 and is widely credited as the first true dual-arm collaborative industrial robot designed to work safely alongside humans without safety cages. Each YuMi arm has 7 degrees of freedom, a payload of 500 grams, and a reach of about 500 millimeters. The robot weighs around 38 kilograms and uses padded magnesium-alloy arms with rounded edges, no pinch points, and inherent force limiting to comply with collaborative robot safety standards.
YuMi was conceived for small-parts assembly in industries like consumer electronics, watchmaking, and medical devices, where dexterity and precision matter more than payload. The product line has since expanded to a single-arm IRB 14050 (Single-Arm YuMi) for narrower benchtop installations. ABB won the Red Dot product design award for YuMi, and the robot is often pointed to as the first commercially significant member of the collaborative robot category alongside competing offerings from Universal Robots.
GoFa, marketed as CRB 15000, is ABB's general-purpose six-axis cobot family launched in 2021. The base GoFa offers a 5 kg payload and 950 mm reach with TCP speeds up to 2.2 m/s and IP54 protection. Each of its six joints integrates torque sensors that detect contact with humans and bring the robot to an immediate stop. Programming uses lead-through teaching and ABB's Wizard Easy Programming, a block-based environment that allows non-experts to deploy applications. ABB has since extended the GoFa range with higher-payload variants up to 12 kg.
SWIFTI is positioned as the bridge between cobots and industrial robots. The CRB 1100 SWIFTI offers a 4 kg payload and 475 mm or 580 mm reach but moves at a TCP speed above 5 m/s, roughly five times faster than typical cobots in its class. With 0.01 mm position repeatability and a Performance Level d Cat 3 safety rating, SWIFTI suits intermittent collaboration scenarios such as kitting, screwdriving, polishing, and assembly insertion where the robot can run at industrial speeds when the workspace is clear and slow down or stop when a human enters.
In June 2024, ABB announced the next-generation OmniCore robot controller platform, which began replacing the long-running IRC5 controller (introduced in 2004). OmniCore is built around a modular architecture designed for the integration of artificial intelligence, sensors, cloud and edge computing. ABB reports that OmniCore enables robots to run up to 25 percent faster while consuming up to 20 percent less energy compared with IRC5, supports motion control accuracy at the micrometer level, and is designed to scale from cobots to the heaviest IRB 8700 robots on a single platform.
ABB has also publicly described work to integrate the NVIDIA Jetson edge computing platform into OmniCore for real-time AI inference at the edge, exposing the controller to vision, learning-based grasping, and other neural network workloads directly on the robot.
RobotStudio is ABB's offline programming and simulation suite, often described as the most widely used offline programming tool in industry. It provides a digital twin environment where users can model production cells, plan paths, simulate cycle times, and validate programs before any code touches a physical robot. ABB cites cases where RobotStudio's automatic path planning has reduced cycle times by up to 50 percent through collision-free path generation. The suite supports the full ABB robot portfolio, integrates with CAD tools, and runs on standard Windows PCs.
In 2024 ABB announced that RobotStudio would integrate NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and physically-based rendering to deliver high-fidelity, photorealistic simulation. The integration aims to close the so-called sim-to-real gap, with ABB and NVIDIA citing accuracy of up to 99 percent between simulation and the physical robot. The capability is being commercialized as a subscription product called RobotStudio HyperReality, planned for general availability in the second half of 2026. AppStudio, ABB's lower-code authoring environment, complements RobotStudio with reusable application templates and skills.
ABB built its autonomous mobile robot (AMR) business around the 2021 acquisition of ASTI Mobile Robotics Group, a Spanish AMR specialist headquartered in Burgos. ABB paid roughly $190 million for ASTI, which had been founded in 1982 and employed more than 300 people across Spain, France, and Germany. ASTI's portfolio included autonomous towing vehicles, goods-to-person AMRs, unit carriers, and box movers, plus fleet and order management software. ABB rebranded the portfolio under its own name and integrated it into Robotics & Discrete Automation, opening an Asia AMR hub at the new Shanghai mega factory.
In January 2024, ABB acquired Sevensense Robotics, a 2018 ETH Zurich spin-off whose core technology was AI-driven 3D Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (Visual SLAM). Visual SLAM enables an AMR to be guided around a facility once and then build, share, and continuously update a 3D map across the fleet without reflective markers, magnetic tape, or fixed infrastructure. ABB had previously made a minority investment in Sevensense in 2021 and brought roughly 35 employees into ABB Robotics with the full acquisition. ABB cites Ford (using Visual SLAM AMRs at U.S. production sites) and Michelin (intralogistics at a Spain factory) as anchor reference customers.
In December 2022, ABB officially opened a $150 million, 67,000-square-meter robotics mega factory in the Kangqiao area of Shanghai's Pudong New Area. The facility produces ABB's full robot portfolio, supplies the Asian market, and serves as the company's largest robotics R&D, manufacturing, and application base globally. The factory is itself a showcase of ABB technology: it has no traditional fixed assembly lines and instead uses flexible, digitally connected modular production cells served by intelligent AMRs. AI-powered systems handle screwdriving, assembly, and material movement on the production floor. ABB's Vasteras factory remains the European supply hub and the Auburn Hills, Michigan, plant supplies the Americas.
ABB has been one of the most aggressive legacy industrial robotics suppliers in absorbing modern AI and machine learning into its products. Its AI moves cluster around three themes: AI for navigation and perception (Visual SLAM and 3D vision), AI for manipulation and picking (deep learning for grasp planning), and AI in simulation and digital twins (physics-based simulation, sim-to-real transfer, and large-model integration).
ABB Robotics' partnership with NVIDIA spans several axes. RobotStudio integrates NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD-based physically-based rendering to drive the upcoming RobotStudio HyperReality subscription, targeting roughly 99 percent sim-to-real fidelity. ABB has publicly said it is evaluating integration of the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform inside OmniCore for real-time inference. ABB and NVIDIA also collaborate on Visual SLAM for ABB's autonomous mobile robots, building on NVIDIA's long-running Isaac stack for robotics simulation, perception, and policy training.
In 2019, ABB ran an AI Robotic Picking Challenge to find a partner for deep-learning grasping in warehouses. Covariant, a Berkeley startup co-founded by Pieter Abbeel, won the challenge and entered a partnership with ABB in February 2020 to co-develop AI-driven picking. The first joint installation was deployed at Active Ants in Utrecht, Netherlands. Covariant combined large-scale supervised learning with reinforcement learning to handle long-tail SKUs in e-commerce fulfillment. In August 2024, Amazon executed a so-called reverse acqui-hire of Covariant, taking a non-exclusive license to its technology and hiring the founders plus about 25 percent of the workforce in a deal valued at around $400 million. ABB's relationship with Covariant predated the Amazon transaction, but the broader market shift highlighted the strategic value of foundation-model-style robot brains for industrial picking.
The January 2024 Sevensense acquisition (described above) brought ABB an AI-native navigation stack tailored to dynamic environments where layouts change daily. Visual SLAM allows AMRs to differentiate between static features and moving objects, share map updates across a fleet, and reduce commissioning from weeks to days, positioning ABB favorably against AGV-style competitors that still rely on physical infrastructure.
ABB's B&R Industrial Automation business, acquired in 2017 for $2 billion, contributes machine automation, drives, and industrial PCs that increasingly carry AI-grade compute at the edge. B&R's PLCs and motion controllers are tightly integrated with ABB Robotics, supporting unified machine and robot control under a single runtime.
ABB's industrial robot customer base spans the global manufacturing economy, with strong concentration in automotive, electronics, food and beverage, and general industry. Cumulative installs exceed 500,000 robots.
| Customer segment | Representative customers | Typical applications |
|---|---|---|
| Automotive (ICE) | BMW, Volvo, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, Great Wall, Changan Ford | BIW welding, painting, stamping, powertrain, assembly |
| Automotive (EV) | New-energy vehicle makers in China and Europe | Battery cell handling, e-axle assembly, BIW, painting |
| Tier 1 automotive | Magna, Faurecia | Trim, body components, integration |
| Electronics | Foxconn (Apple, Sony assembly), other contract manufacturers | PCB handling, screwdriving, insertion, cosmetic inspection |
| Logistics | Active Ants, warehouse operators | Pick-and-place, depalletizing, sortation |
| Food and beverage | Major brewers, dairy and bakery groups | Palletizing, packaging |
| Pharma and medical | Various | Sterile material handling, dispensing |
| Heavy industry | Steel mills, foundries, presses | Press tending, machine tending, hot work |
ABB has supplied robots to nearly every major auto OEM at some point. Disclosed contracts include a $52 million order from Ford for BIW welding at the Harbin plant in China, and a 2,400-robot order for BMW's Regensburg, Leipzig, and Tiexi plants for material handling, gluing, and spot welding. While Tesla relies heavily on KUKA for its main body-in-white lines, ABB robots are present at multiple Tier 1 suppliers feeding Tesla and other EV programs. In electronics, ABB robots are widely used inside the Foxconn ecosystem and at other assemblers serving Apple, Sony, and Microsoft.
The last decade has seen ABB acquire and divest aggressively to refocus around electrification, motion, process automation, and robotics. The table below highlights deals that are particularly relevant to its automation and AI capabilities.
| Year | Target | Deal type | Approximate value | Strategic purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Baldor Electric (US) | Acquisition | $4.2B | Industrial motors, low-voltage drives |
| 2017 | B&R Industrial Automation (Austria) | Acquisition | ~$2B | Machine automation, PLCs, drives, industrial PCs |
| 2017 | GE Industrial Solutions (US) | Acquisition | $2.6B | Low-voltage circuit breakers, switchgear in North America |
| 2018 to 2020 | Power Grids (sold to Hitachi) | Divestment | ~$11B (80.1% stake) | Refocus on automation and electrification, formed Hitachi Energy |
| 2021 | ASTI Mobile Robotics (Spain) | Acquisition | ~$190M | Autonomous mobile robots, fleet software |
| 2024 | Sevensense Robotics (Switzerland) | Acquisition | (undisclosed) | AI Visual SLAM navigation for AMRs |
| 2025 (announced) | ABB Robotics divested to SoftBank Group (Japan) | Divestment | $5.375B | Refocus core ABB on electrification and process automation |
The announced sale of the entire Robotics division to SoftBank, made public on 8 October 2025 and expected to close in mid-to-late 2026, is the largest single move in ABB's recent restructuring. SoftBank has framed the deal as a strategic step in its push to build a portfolio of "Physical AI" companies that pair foundation-model AI with embodied robots, following its other large robotics investments. ABB expects a non-operational pre-tax book gain of roughly $2.4 billion and net cash proceeds of about $5.3 billion. After the sale, ABB will continue to focus its three remaining business areas (Electrification, Motion, Process Automation) on industrial electrification and the energy transition.
ABB has cycled through several CEOs since its founding, each leaving a distinct strategic mark.
| Period | CEO | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1988 to 1996 | Percy Barnevik | Architect of the merger and the early acquisition spree |
| 2008 to 2013 | Joe Hogan | Acquired Baldor; pushed automation expansion |
| 2013 to 2019 | Ulrich Spiesshofer | Sold Power Grids to Hitachi (announced 2018) |
| 2020 to 2024 | Bjorn Rosengren | Decentralized into 20 divisions; opened Shanghai mega factory |
| 2024 to present | Morten Wierod | Announced Robotics sale to SoftBank; deepened NVIDIA partnership |
Peter Voser, formerly CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, has served as Chairman for much of the recent era and was instrumental in selecting both Rosengren and Wierod.
ABB positions itself as an enabler of decarbonization. Roughly 75 percent of its revenue comes from products tied to electrification or efficient energy use, including motors, drives, low- and medium-voltage equipment, EV charging, and renewable connection gear. Its Motion division is a top-three global supplier of industrial motors and drives, and electrification of building, data center, and utility infrastructure is the largest revenue driver in 2024. ABB's e-mobility business, which manufactures DC fast chargers up to 360 kW, was carved out and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November 2022 as ABB E-mobility while ABB retained a majority stake.
ABB's industrial robotics business has shaped the modern automation landscape in several measurable ways. The IRB 6 in 1974 set the template for microprocessor-controlled, all-electric articulated robots, displacing the older hydraulic generation. YuMi in 2015 helped legitimize the collaborative robot category for industrial customers, particularly in dual-arm assembly. The OmniCore platform launched in 2024 showed that legacy controller architectures could be redesigned around AI inference and edge compute without sacrificing the reliability automotive and electronics customers demand. The 2024 NVIDIA partnership and Omniverse integration into RobotStudio brought industrial-grade physical AI tooling to a customer base of hundreds of thousands of installed robots.
The announced sale of ABB Robotics to SoftBank in 2025 will, if it closes, end nearly forty years of robotics development inside ABB and roughly fifty years of robotics under the broader ASEA-ABB lineage. Industry analysts have read the deal in two ways: one view holds that ABB is locking in value at the peak of an automotive-dominated industrial robotics market and that SoftBank's deeper AI ambitions can push ABB Robotics further; the other view notes that robotics was one of ABB's most visible growth and margin stories, and that selling it leaves ABB more concentrated in slower-growing power and electrification markets. The brand and product portfolio (IRB, YuMi, GoFa, SWIFTI, OmniCore, RobotStudio, ASTI, Sevensense) will continue under the ABB Robotics name through and after the transaction, with operations remaining headquartered in Vasteras and Zurich and the Shanghai mega factory as the global capacity anchor.