Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp said on Friday that a unit of the company will buy two firms that build walking robots from Alphabet Inc , which would add to the group’s growing artificial intelligence portfolio.
The Japanese company will buy Boston Dynamics and Tokyo-based Schaft, which design and manufacture robots that simulate human movement. It did not disclose the terms of the transactions.
SoftBank’s shares rose as much as 7.9 percent after the deal was announced, hitting a 17-year high.
