SoftBank is in early talks to buy security company Allied Universal at an equity value of up to $18 billion

SoftBank Group is in early-stage talks to buy Allied Universal, the privately held security and facility-services company that owns G4S, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg News, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg's sources said a deal could give Allied an equity value of as much as $18 billion.

What has been reported

Bloomberg News first reported on Friday, Oct. 16, that SoftBank was considering a purchase of Allied Universal, citing people familiar with the matter. Those people said a deal could give the privately held company an equity value of as much as $18 billion. Allied also has about $12 billion of publicly traded debt, Bloomberg reported, so a buyer taking on that debt would be paying well above the equity figure.

Reuters, citing its own source, put the possible value at about $18 billion later on Friday. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the two sides were in early-stage talks and that the $18 billion figure excludes debt. The Journal said a deal is far from certain. Reuters said no final decision has been made, including on price.

SoftBank declined to comment to Reuters, and Allied Universal did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment. Neither company has announced anything.

Who Allied Universal is

Allied Universal sells security guards, patrols, event staffing, monitoring technology and janitorial services. The company says it operates in more than 100 countries with a workforce of about 770,000 people. It operates under the Allied Universal name in North America and under the G4S brand elsewhere.

That international business came from its takeover of G4S, the British security group, which Allied completed on April 6, 2021, at 245 pence a share, valuing G4S at £3.8 billion. At the time, Allied said the deal made it the third-largest employer in North America and the seventh-largest in the world. Its backers include the buyout firm Warburg Pincus and the Canadian pension fund La Caisse.

Allied already sells some of the technology SoftBank is interested in. Its own service list includes an AI security platform called HELIAUS and a robotics and autonomous technology line, and it markets services to data center operators.

Why SoftBank is interested

All three reports link the interest to SoftBank's push into AI and robotics. According to the Reuters source, SoftBank would eventually aim to replace some staff with robots for certain security tasks, though putting humanoid robots on security work would probably take longer.

In October 2025, SoftBank agreed to buy ABB's robotics business for $5.375 billion. Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's chairman and chief executive, said in that announcement that "SoftBank's next frontier is Physical AI." The company said then that it was investing in four areas: AI chips, AI robots, AI data centers and energy. At the time, it said it expected the ABB deal to close in mid-to-late 2026.

A security company with hundreds of thousands of workers and clients across offices, venues, transit systems and data centers would give SoftBank a large real-world setting in which to try out robots. It would also mean owning a business that still depends on people. Even on the reported plans, machines would take over only some tasks, and only over time.

What comes next

The talks could still end without a deal, and the reported values are not offers. The main questions are whether SoftBank makes a formal bid, what it would pay including Allied's debt, and how it would fund a purchase of this size alongside its other AI commitments.

SoftBank's Tokyo-listed shares had already closed for the week when the first report appeared, so their next trading session will be the market's first reaction.