Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

https://startupfortune.com/hyundai-takes-full-control-of-boston-dynamics-as-softbank-exits-for-325-million/

by ck2 • 1 month ago

975 401 1 month ago

startupfortune.com

travoc• 1 month ago

If only they could make an engine or transmission that doesn't blow up at 80,000 miles.

pixl97• 1 month ago

Luckily they have a 10 year 100k mile warranty.

linksnapzz3• 1 month ago

...which AFAIK isn't transferable. IOW, used Hyundais are cheap for a reason.

mikestorrent• 1 month ago

So true. I hear they replace more engines than any other brand. I'm surprised they sell so well; a used Toyota would be a far better choice than a new Hyundai

kristofferR• 1 month ago

Hyundai EVs are great though, the Hyundai Ionic 5N is probably the best EV there is (for car enthusiasts).

BHSPitMonkey• 1 month ago

Same goes for the ICCU, I guess! (Mine hasn't blown yet, knock on wood...)

SequoiaHope• 1 month ago

It’s so weird to use an AI generated image for this article when there are so many images of Atlas out there.

bayindirh4• 1 month ago

Generating an image from an already open tab is faster than making a search engine query and selecting a good, high resolution image.

Who cares about quality. Speed is the new black.

babypuncher2• 1 month ago

and tech companies wonder why consumers hate AI

LargeWu• 1 month ago

Letting AI generate your image also dances around the issues of attribution and licensing, for better or worse.

fnordpiglet2• 1 month ago

ai generated imagery can’t be copyrighted while all other photography can and generally needs to be treated as it is. Therefore you likely have to pay a royalty to Getty or other asset outlet. Of use AI.

kaonwarb• 1 month ago

The text reads LLM-ish as well.

dyauspitr5• 1 month ago

And figure out usage and licensing and all that crap. So much easier to just generate a brand new image.

AJ007• 1 month ago

Little appreciated fact is news orgs have full time employees just dealing with licensing all day long, and they pay out millions of dollars when someone fucks up.

achrono• 1 month ago

Take a step back and look at this article's diction and the rest of this entire website. Completely AI generated.

All those tokens have to go somewhere

LanceJones• 1 month ago

So this appears to mean that Hyundai is effectively taking BD's humanoids "off the market" (B2C/B2B markets). And Softbank wants to take a different humanoids stake in OpenAI's plans.

jansan• 1 month ago

This is a bit disappointing, isn't it? Boston Dynamics had the coolest robots and everybody was marveling how they would take over the world eventually. Turns out the market isn't gigantic and the use cases are limited, at least for now.

However, let's hope they will keep on doing cool stuff under their new owner.

darksim905• 1 month ago

Outside of some military applications and maybe search and rescue, a lot of people kind of freaked out about Boston Dynamics. They have cool robots, sure, but at what cost if they are implemented by a bad actor? No thanks.

DennisP• 1 month ago

I don't think that follows. Hyundai could well sell these after they've dogfooded them for a while.

Car factories seem to be a pretty good initial market, given that Tesla is doing Optimus and Figure has humanoids in a BMW factory. But the whole point is that these are general purpose robots, and there are lots of other factories. By the time that market is saturated they'll be capable of more.

jeffbee• 1 month ago

If it's disappointing then it's been disappointing for over 5 years, since Hyundai has owned the company for 5 years.

moondowner• 1 month ago

`buys` sounds like they have just purchased BD, should be `takes full control` or something similar.

tmach32• 1 month ago

Wait, haven’t they already owned them for years? Edit: right, they’re just buying the remaining 9%.

mlmonkey2• 1 month ago

I still think dumping BD was one of the biggest mistakes of Sundar's career. And that's saying something.

sahila• 1 month ago

Per this sale, BD is worth $3.25B. Just recently, Google paid $2.7B for two years of Noam Shazeer through the Character.ai deal.

This seems like a small correction if they wanted to reacquire and clearly the market isn't valuing BD all that high.

Why do you think it's one of Sundar's biggest mistake?

TheGrassyKnoll• 1 month ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Shazeer

mlmonkey2• 1 month ago

Not capitalizing on LLMs until OpenAI came out with ChatGPT, and then suddenly everybody was running around like headless chickens is bigger. And then there was Fitbit. Motorola. and more recently, Noam and Character.AI.

But imagine: robotics cred of BD combined with AI chops of GDM. It would have been something. Turns out, internally, GDM has robots they're training, experimenting on, etc even today. So why dump BD and lose that platform?

NitpickLawyer2• 1 month ago

There's got to be something wrong at the core of BD. They've been pawned off a bunch of times, and they still don't have products out the factory line like they should. I think the tech community has been impressed by their videos, but the fact that their most sold thing is a toy dog at a luxury car price point says a lot about the company.

My personal take is that one of the reasons is their posture against ML. They've been very "GOFCT" and have only recently started to incorporate ML concepts.

calf• 1 month ago

What is Gofct and does robotics industry generally just have had a slower adoption of ML because of the realtime domain requirements, I'm just curious and wondering aloud here.

TuringNYC• 1 month ago

> There's got to be something wrong at the core of BD. They've been pawned off a bunch of times,

Well...there is the uncanny similarity to the T-800 and and uneasy realization that the owner of BD could become Cyberdyne Systems IRL. Perhaps some companies like that notoriety but not sure if many want that.

https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/T-800

generuso• 1 month ago

Marc Raibert was a student of Ivan Sutherland. Sutherland had a lot of pull at DARPA. This facilitated the unique prototyping work done at Boston Dynamics to get noticed and supported by DARPA.

But as a flip side of this, Boston Dynamics developed certain idiosyncratic interests in getting the hydraulic valves just right, etc. Their machines required a lot of tender care, (expensive!) and were dangerous to be around.

When Google acquired them, many things were mismatched. Andy Rubin, the VP at Google who advocated for BD, got fired for alleged sexual misconduct. This cast a shadow on the whole plan that he was trying to implement. DARPA finding did not sit well with Google's ethics. They pushed BD to stop getting grants from DARPA.

Expensive and dangerous robots were not an ideal fit for AI experimentation. Google was buying cheap and much safer tabletop robots for that. All in all, there was no good fit, and after spending tons of money on it, Google have gotten rid of them. They did encourage BD to develop a cheaper, safer electric robot, and this became Spot Mini.

modeless2• 1 month ago

Yeah. Google was too impatient and forced BD to productize prematurely (Spot, Handle), then dumped them when it didn't work out immediately. AI just wasn't ready yet. Imagine if Google had let BD focus on research until DeepMind was ready with the AI side of things. I think with the right joint research program they could have already been deploying humanoids today.

Iulioh4• 1 month ago

Google dumping a project when it does not produce instant results?

That seems out of character

protonbob• 1 month ago

Wow I’m so glad that didn’t happen.

gowld4• 1 month ago

2017 was shortly before Google stopped being afraid of being pegged as an AI killbot company.

ChrisArchitect• 1 month ago

Title really should clarify: Hyundai takes full control of Boston Dynamics

Rest is previously reported stuff.

Related from earlier in the year:

Hyundai Introduces Its Next-Gen Atlas Robot at CES 2026 [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46520508

And old discussions when the intial buy happened:

2020: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25363981

2021: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27588047

androiddrew• 1 month ago

Boston Dynamics gets passed around again

dyauspitr5• 1 month ago

Nope, Hyundai already owned it, they’re just going to 100%

Hugsbox2• 1 month ago

I don't understand why they would implement humanoid robots instead of purpose-built robots. The human form is not the most optimal way to do most tasks, especially as it relates to manufacturing. Robots don't need to look like humans, they need to be useful. Seems like putting in an awful lot of extra unnecessary work to end up with a worse result.

post-it• 1 month ago

Because a humanoid robot can replace (theoretically) any human worker, whereas a purpose-built robot can only replace one kind of worker. Or at least that's what Asimov said in Caves of Steel.

cucumber3732842• 1 month ago

They have god knows how manny bajillion dollars tied up in machinery designed for human use, a human can step in when the robot breaks, and they can buy more robots if the humans get uppity. Those seem like a bunch of good reasons to me.

The humanoid form factor is certainly may not be ideal but I guess they think the flexibility is worth it

ACCount374• 1 month ago

I'm not sure how many times this has to be restated.

It's car manufacturing. Everything that could be done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor is already done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor.

What remains unautomated, then?

The long tail of tasks that are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity to be offloaded onto traditional robots.

This is where this new generation of robotics comes in. This is the kind of task they're designed to do: "a task that's still done by a human in a high automation environment". Universal robots are angling for the tasks that are impossible or uneconomical to automate with traditional industrial robots.

looperhacks• 1 month ago

But if these tasks are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity for a purpose-built robot, how can a general purpose robot perform them better? If anything, they should be doing worse.

The only thing I can think of are tasks that are so rarely done, it's not economical to build a robot for. But I then I also don't see how another robot solves this problem.

ranger_danger4• 1 month ago

They're just one of today's lucky ten thousand.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

cpgxiii7• 1 month ago

Everything that could be done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor is already done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor.

Hah! Hardly. I say this as someone whose first "real job" was in applying robotics research to automotive assembly - there are still a ton of assembly tasks that could be performed by a fixed-base robot arm, or a robot arm on a linear rail/fixed gantry. Wheeled mobile manipulators are only needed in a few cases, and humanoid form-factor is only "necessary" in very few cases (and I don't think the current crop of humanoids is particularly suited to these tasks).

In my opinion/experience, the impediments are that (1) the system integrators that are usually responsible for assembly-line robotics are too stupid to figure out how to apply robots to the problem, (2) the automakers themselves are often too short-sighted/stupid/unwilling to invest in increased automation (and particularly in building the in-house competency that they really need), (3) the hostile/exploitative relationship between (most) automakers and their main suppliers means that low-hanging improvements to parts/assemblies are a non-starter, and (4) the automaker C-suite (and investors) are too drawn to silver-bullet solutions (e.g. humanoids) than practical automation improvements.

LanceH• 1 month ago

What remains unautomated, then?

And the tasks that change from day to day.

colordrops• 1 month ago

Naw, the real answer is that factories have been built around human labor - they weren't built to be forward-compatible with purpose-built robots, so during the transitional period where we build these purpose-built robots, you need humanoid robots to fill in the parts where the factories were geared for human labor.

jollyllama• 1 month ago

It's car manufacturing. Everything that could be done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor is already done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor.
What remains unautomated, then?

Stuff that can be done by purpose specific robot arms on wheeled platforms, which is very difficult, but will be much more feasible than a humanoid robot doing anything.

dopa42365• 1 month ago

What you need then is a better arm (or even just hand), not a human.

Or a new take on car design with automated production in mind regarding all the wiring and what not (easier said than done, I'm sure many have tried and failed, but eventually someone will succeed).

not_a_bot_4sho• 1 month ago

I'm not sure how many times this has to be restated.

This strike me more as a repeated internet myth more than anything else. There is near endless opportunity for purpose-specific robot forms.

SecretDreams2• 1 month ago

So we want to replace a lot of cheap human labour with expensive robots?

Even if I think this has legs, where do the cheap humans go to work after? Where/what are the remaining jobs for all of this displaced labour in both white collar and blue collar worlds? It basically screams UBI. And in a UBI world, the economy looks pretty different and humanoid esque robots start to look either very altruistic or very dystopian depending on how hard the oligarchs don't want things to change.

Like, what's the end game for humans in this path we're embarking?

WhyNotHugo• 1 month ago

If the task is too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity for a purpose-built robot arm to handle, why would a walking, humanoid generaic-use robot do any better?

ryukoposting2• 1 month ago

What remains unautomated, then?

Lots of things that don't require legs.

Humanoids are to the 2020s what VRML was to the '90s. A fantasy fueled by the imaginations of cloistered techoids.

Ethee• 1 month ago

I'm spitballing here as I don't actually have a concrete answer for you. But from my understanding automobile manufacturing is one of if not THE most advanced 'purpose-built' robotics sectors. While I agree with you that having a purpose-built thing usually wins out for assembly line manufacturing, I wonder if this isn't an attempt to branch out away from single-purpose robotics into more general or multi-faceted manufacturing.

Danox8• 1 month ago

Spitball the who going to buy the product down the road...

nradov• 1 month ago

I took a tour of the BMW Group Plant Spartanburg body shop. It's heavily automated with industrial robots inside safety cages. But they still have human workers pick up parts from rolling carts and place them into templates for the robot arms. BMW has been running a trial with Figure humanoid robots to automate that remaining piece. Apparently those robots haven't worked very well, but presumably Hyundai thinks they can do it better?

https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/news/general/2024/humanoid-robot...

MysticOracle• 1 month ago

BD was training Atlas for Hyundai factory in Savannah, Georgia for a while:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbHeh7qwils

moffkalast• 1 month ago

Can't you just, you know, stick another robot arm on the damn carts and have it offload itself? Surely there's a simpler way.

Maybe what they're actually acquiring is Handle, not Atlas.

notahacker• 1 month ago

Some colleague of mine visited the Mini plant earlier this week. Apparently they had a Boston Dynamics dog patrolling simply to spot stuff that had been left where it wasn't supposed to be left

stephc_int13• 1 month ago

I think the rationale is that they are already using typical car factory automation, but they see a huge potential market for general purpose robotics in the coming decades, they don't need the humanoids, they are simply dogfooding a future product.

I think this is smart and not very risky. Tesla is playing a similar game with Optimus, for now Hyundai/Boston Dynamics is at least 5 years ahead.

stavros• 1 month ago

It's much cheaper to create one general-purpose robot for everything than many different robots, each optimized to each task.

glitchdout2• 1 month ago

War in Ukraine does not validate that assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwWwcnT7M

sgt• 1 month ago

That's like saying there's no need for a generic CPU. The only way forward is a ASIC. Once a generic CPU does everything well enough, it's extremely versatile.

jrflo• 1 month ago

Custom built robots are expensive (basically an R&D project in themselves) and inflexible, if you want to update the process you have to redesign your automated system. The dream of humanoid robots is they can adapt to new manufacturing processes like human workers.

terramex• 1 month ago

Humanoidal robots make sense when they need to operate in spaces designed for humans bodies. Cars are designed and built to be used and serviced by humans, especially their interiors so you need humanoid robot to automate building them. Car exteriors are not built for humans to interact with so they are already being built by specialized robots.

93po• 1 month ago

This exactly. You need to mow and leaf blow and weed and edge lawns. You need to get transported in a car from location to location. You need hands to operate all these tools. And arms. And given landscaping, likely legs. You need to move bags of mulch. Fitting in human environments and using human tools is a huge thing for areas of work and life where it doesn't make sense to move a 2000 pound robotic arm around from place to place.

Dishes, laundry, house cleaning, cooking, food prep, organization, lawn work, car repair, home repair, etc etc etc. Expecting purpose built robots for every single task seems ridiculous.

sampton• 1 month ago

Why do you need software when FPGA can solve everything.

RajT88• 1 month ago

Robot Chicken had a fairly cynical take on this. I won't link it here.

Dumblydorr• 1 month ago

You don’t understand because you’re not an expert? First off they have numerous non-humanoid robots if you follow them at all. Second, Clearly they’ve got strong reasoning, they’ve just been bought. Third, out of thousands of attempts at humanoids, their robots are seemingly the best we’ve yet seen in this class. They must be doing it right when so few others got any traction.

justsomehnguy• 1 month ago

they need to be useful

They would be. When everything what could be done would be done by a robot. 24/7. Even without the lights on the floor.

ramses0• 1 month ago

I'm looking for a better video of it (from one of the engineers), but look at the NASA robot hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfDXzkFHnz0

https://www.google.com/search?q=nasa+robonaut+video+hand+why...

The gist of it is that all tools on the spacecraft (eg: space-drill, space-coffee-maker, space-airlock) are all designed to fit a gloved human astronaut hand. Waaaaay more complicated to make a robo-hand than a robo-suction cup or robo-claw, but then you are matching the environment, and guarantee tool compatibility against all extant tasks!

We already have specialized robots on earth... paper slicer, lawn mower, bazooka, whatever. They're all machines that are specialized for the task at hand, we're not making a humanoid robot that gets down on all fours and individually plucks blades of glass.

The car factories already have specialized robots... they're not mimicking a human hand holding a can of spray paint, shaking it up, and painting the car that way... it's a 6-axis arm, or a whole "grab the car and flip it while spraying paint" system.

It's not about inventing purpose-specific robots, it's about handling that long-tail of "stuff with tools that a human is designed to be able to use." Go over there, push that button. Go move that box from table1 to table2. Etc.

For well defined tasks in the factory domain, make a "real robot". For ad-hoc tasks in the interim... strap an LLM to a camera, battery, robo-legs and arms, cross your fingers, and hope for the best?

itsamario• 1 month ago

Patient complex moves first.

bombcar• 1 month ago

The first somewhat general purpose humanoid robot will sell like gangbusters to the rich, even just as a parlor toy/trick.

Jegber• 1 month ago

The human form IS the most optimal way to do most tasks

gowld4• 1 month ago

Most human tasks. Earth-movers and mining-trucks aren't human form.

dyauspitr5• 1 month ago

This same nonsensical question again. Because the world is built for humans, because these are general purpose to replace a human laborer. It can immediately go from picking up parts in a factory to mowing the lawn in the same day.

PeterStuer• 1 month ago

Our'legacy' world is built for human shsped operation. So a generic operator will hsve to mimic human shape.

ckemere2• 1 month ago

Training data of task completion. See, e.g., robots doing backflips. Presumably there’s an optimal robot for gymnastics but if you start with humanoid form you can train based on many videos of human movement. The alternative - world model sim with physics and loss functions- perhaps ends up being too unconstrained when you add in optimization of the robot form…

gowld4• 1 month ago

AI watching videos of humans seems an incredibly inefficient way to solve acrobatic balance. It is just physics and engineering. The hard part is in the materials and assemblages for enabling complex and subtle movements and the fine motor control, not knowing what the motions are.

marcta• 1 month ago

Maybe it's like Formula 1: it's a purposefully-extreme goal, which drives new development and makes "lesser" goals feel more achievable.

bigmadshoe• 1 month ago

Two things: 1) we have abundant training data for humanoid embodiments (watch humans do things), and 2) the world is already designed for humans.

Graziano_M• 1 month ago

#1 is the main reason. There is basically unlimited data of things being done with human bodies, and it's also the easiest data to collect (tell a human to do something).

imtringued• 1 month ago

Whenever the topic is about humanoids all the technologists suddenly become creationists to sell the product.

There's half a dozen techno-creationists in this HN submission.

Something these techno-creationists are silent about is the fact that "for human designed" environments require the full intelligence of a human and not just have the limbs of a human. The reason for that is that most of these environments are hardly designed at all and instead rely intensively on extreme levels of human adaptation.

It's like self driving cars. The extreme tail end of things a driver must do is endless. You will have to draw a line somewhere that designates the limits of the robots and the moment you do, you will have to design environments for humanoid robots instead of humans.

saltcured• 1 month ago

I understand the sentiment, but you assume they are planning to build humanoid robots to walk around the human-oriented space in the factory.

Perhaps they want to put some of the sensing and control features in, so a humanoid-like dexterity or adaptability for the business end of a floor-mounted robot arm?

carabiner• 1 month ago

Hugsbox has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, that's why he hasn't responded to anyone here.

csallen• 1 month ago

We have a world built for humans, designed for humans to walk around and get things done. How, exactly, would it not be useful to have a robot that looks, walks, runs, jumps, lifts, carriers, pushes, pulls, twists, bends, steers, and labors like a human? It would obviously be incredibly useful.

Hugsbox2• 1 month ago

As a person who works in a factory, areas are changed drastically, regularly, and quite fast. The cost of adapting areas to accommodate purpose-built machines pales in comparison to making robots work in suboptimal ways. It's much more cost-effective to rebuild a production area for very specific machines (something my workplace does frequently but never seems to replace workers) than it is to engineer and manager a machine to do work that's already best-suited for human workers.

jbullock35• 1 month ago

This recent article has a few relevant notes about the uses (or lack thereof) of humanoid robots: https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2026/0612/ai-humanoid-rob....

SeriousM• 1 month ago

At least a third arm would be helpful. I can't count how many times I've wished for a third arm!

sciencejerk• 1 month ago

How about a third leg? Eh?

stainablesteel• 1 month ago

they don't need to use the whole humanoid, they can take the legs or abdomen alone and use them as is

the human frame is just an experimental proxy for functionality, which turned out to be promising

two arms alone is the purpose-built robot you're referencing

moralestapia• 1 month ago

The human form is not the most optimal way to do most tasks

What are you talking about?

Go outside, look around! The whole word was created by and for humans.

zeofig• 1 month ago

Marketing

danielsilbaugh• 1 month ago

The world is built for the human form already. If we design around the robotic form instead, we lose compatibility with all that, and lose the fallback of using human tools/interfaces manually if the automated systems go down. Plus I'd rather have robots that look like Robin Williams than the sentinels from the Matrix.

alkonaut• 1 month ago

I wonder what the reason is to not go humanoid but super-human? Lack of training data?

For example, having 3 arms would help a lot of tasks. Or having fingers with twice the length of human fingers and 4 joints on each finger could enable them to switch a headlight bulb on a French car.

XorNot5• 1 month ago

The third arm would put a load in one direction of the robot. You can no longer balance by swinging 1 arm back, you have to swing both of them, or involve a leg motion you might not want to because the third arm has a more limited range of motion.

Hands are just hard: no one is building good hands yet because the materials science and motors isn't there to do it (see the production Atlas's with the 3 finger grippers).

And of course training data: we have a wealth of examples of how to move a bipedal platform around, but there are no 4-armed humans so you'd be figuring out the balancing from scratch (but it also has the same problem: 4 arms in physics terms is still basically 2: if you lose your balance you'll need to involve both arms to correct it).

bjackman• 1 month ago

For my personal use, I really fucking want a humanoid robot, coz my home and all the bullshit in it was built for humanoids, I want a robot to do the bullshit for me. I don't want to move into a new, robot-oriented home.

I've never been to a factory but I bet there's a lot of the same bullshit. Ditto in a mine.

On the other hand, I've been in a datacentre. I don't see much need for a humanoid form in there, everything is flat and predictable. Why don't we have robot DC techs? This is probably an interesting clue re the next 10 years of robotics and maybe the reason Boston Dynamics is only valued at $1.1B.

Seems we might still be pretty limited on usecases. Maybe a dexterity bottleneck.

Zigurd2• 1 month ago

Hyundai bumped their ownership up to 100%, and took the opportunity to reset expectations about when Atlas would be working in Hyundai factories.

While Atlas is the best humanoid robot so far, it still isn't useful in a car factory that's fully equipped with the latest factory robots that are strong enough to juggle car engines and are bolted to the floor.

Everyone knows the killer app for humanoid robots is building the Mars colony amirte?

idiotsecant• 1 month ago

There are plenty of tasks a relatively weak humanoid robot is well suited for. Basically any task that is 'human shaped' and not worth an automated line.

whiplash4512• 1 month ago

"weak" in what sense?

Iulioh4• 1 month ago

Wire harness making is basically a 100% human task now, this is one of the biggest things that would need to get automated but it's a PITA with huge variation and connectors with poor-fish documentation

bilsbie• 1 month ago

BD always seemed more like an R&D company to me or even a university lab. Doesn’t seem like a good fit for a car company.

giwook• 1 month ago

Back in December 2020, Hyundai purchased an 80% controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million, part of a transaction that valued the robotics company at $1.1 billion. That agreement included a put option allowing SoftBank to sell its remaining stake to Hyundai at a later date.

SoftBank has now exercised that option.

Animats• 1 month ago

Oh. It's Softbank exiting humanoid robotics at Softbank's discretion. That's a lot different than " Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics". Hyundai bought them years ago. This is just the last 8%.

SoftTalker• 1 month ago

Seems like a mistake. AI in its current form has limited usefulness for most people. Not something I would pay for to use outside of work. But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that.

Reason0773• 1 month ago

Exactly. Headline is just missing the “[2020]” qualifier.

r721• 1 month ago

Well, the original story title is "Hyundai takes full control of Boston Dynamics as SoftBank exits for $325 million".

fitsumbelay• 1 month ago

But an accurate headline would only reveal a meh-burger and narrow its reach. Can't have that, now ...

echelon• 1 month ago

Why is SoftBank getting out now when every VC is all about "embodied AI"?

Seems like the only companies VCs want to fund now are robotics, energy, and chips. That "software AI" has had its run.

downrightmike• 1 month ago

Softbank is bleeding money and they need cash, AI isn't shaping up to what they thought it would be

letmevoteplease• 1 month ago

Not sure how to square this post with recent headlines like "SoftBank posts $46 billion gain at Vision Fund driven mainly by massive OpenAI bet".

warumdarum• 1 month ago

Sometimes the first one to leave the casino is the last one to join an add hoc concert playing "smoke on the water" for the first time

edm0nd• 1 month ago

didnt they get absolutely rekt on WeWork?

How are they still able to be a thing

dgellow• 1 month ago

That feels so low of a price when compared to the insane valuation people attribute to Tesla robots

gowld4• 1 month ago

The insane valuation is for Elon meme vibes and the "vision" of "colonizing Mars", not any of the products.

criddell• 1 month ago

Yesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.

readme• 1 month ago

Boston Dynamics robots can do gymnastics...

Hey, Hyundai isn't "just a car company"

glaslong2• 1 month ago

The problem is Boston Dynamics makes actual robots, which are much more limited than robots constructed from pure hype.

thewhitetulip• 1 month ago

Thank you. I felt like I was having deja vu because I remember reading this headline

This is the same thing about spacex buying cursor

That news was also published twice!

flgb• 1 month ago

Meanwhile SoftBank buys ABB’s robotics business .. https://group.softbank/en/news/press/20251008

fooker5• 1 month ago

SoftBank’s investment plays have largely been comically wrong.

This is a good hint that robots are really about to take off.

kijin• 1 month ago

Humanoid (or dogoid) robot hardware on its own offers no benefits over non-humanoid factory machines. It just has fancy firmware controlling its motions.

Humanoid robots loaded with an AI agent, on the other hand, could actually make you a sudo sandwich, do your laundry, or help you with that weekend project in the backyard. They're finally about to get useful.

I'm not a fan of humanoid robots personally (they creep me out), but I'd love to have a functional R2-D2 with me.

SilverElfin• 1 month ago

BD always felt like they had some awkward demos but never really revolutionized anything. Now they seem far behind Chinese companies. What happened?

shevis• 1 month ago

I’m pretty surprised to see no mention of Agility in the conversation about other humanoid companies

conception• 1 month ago

Just a note for the thread Hyundai Motor Group makes cars and a lot of other heavy industry things - trains, defense, plant. Rolling robotics fully into their motor group makes complete sense.

zuzululu• 1 month ago

rnteresting part is defense although the economics and power/range limits its practicality.

the other timing here is the increasingly belligerent union who are demanding pretty outrageous compensation for what a typical American worker would make. I think the goal is to immediately automate the workforce and move the plants out of korea speaking to insiders.

rasz2• 1 month ago

Wonder if we see Atlas in Ukraine.

sottol• 1 month ago

I don't think this is solely tied to car manufacturing automation. Even though Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring them, I would imagine they'd be well-positioned to commercialize general-purpose robotics and not just for car manufacturing, if Tesla is anything to go by.

I do think this might be tied to South Korea's demographics, by 2040 the working-age population is projected to decline 25% from 2020 and keep declining almost linearly until leveling out around 17M around 2065, a 50% drop total in < 50 years. I would think HMG / Hyundai sees a huge business opportunity or this might be a national-level political priority but I don't know the specifics.

e12e2• 1 month ago

https://en.hyundai-wia.com/business/defense_business.asp

san4mus• 1 month ago

Hyundai could be the first owner that can actually turn BD's robotics in real product

coreyward• 1 month ago

Warning: AI slop articles ahead.

mattfrommars• 1 month ago

I feel Boston Dynamics appears to be doing far more impressive work to be way 'cheaper' then how much Cursor (60b) or Wiz was acquired for (32b)

shevy-java• 1 month ago

Skynet does suspicious purchases. The robodog may get new weapons soon.

spqw• 1 month ago

South Korea has the world’s highest manufacturing robot density. 1,220 robots per 10,000 employees in 2024 Growing 7% annually since 2019 (source: IFR)

agumonkey• 1 month ago

I'm stumped such a company was on the market for foreign companies. I thought they had deep ties with US Military Industrial Complex.

oxqbldpxo• 1 month ago

This is by far the best robot available: https://clonerobotics.com/

johnohara2• 1 month ago

These kind of stories always make me chuckle. The Boston Dynamics videos always show the humanoid robots running through debris, dancing to the latest music, regaining balance after being assaulted, ever at the ready, ever the obedient servant.

Sort of "join the army see the world" kind of stuff.

The reality is however, pushing a parts cart to the other side of the factory, returning and doing it again. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, with time-off to recharge or possibly re-oil.

I sincerely hope they're not sentient and unable to communicate it. It would certainly account for the blank stare coming from behind the tinted lenses.

rasz2• 1 month ago

What is my purpose? You pass butter.

johnohara2• 1 month ago

Butter. Yessir.

codingjoe• 1 month ago

All I really want to know is if we're getting Mecha suites now to fight Godzilla ;)

paulmist2• 1 month ago

Can anyone suggest some ways to understand automation trends in manufacturing? Watching factory tours on youtube has been super interesting.

moi2388• 1 month ago

I’m sorry, what is that personal robot going to do for me? Do the laundry for which I already have a machine? Dry my clothes for which I already have a machine? Vacuum clean for which I already have a robot? Cook for which I already have an oven? Do the dishes for which I already have a machine?

aetherspawn• 1 month ago

This article is AI slop and it’s on a news site. How embarrassing.

xyst• 1 month ago

Hyundai/Genesis vehicles are pretty bad imo. Wonder if they are pivoting to strictly robotics and automation.

cubano• 1 month ago

So if three Tech companies (Boston Dynamics, Google, and Softbank), very smart ones at that, couldn't think of a way to make Atlas profitable, well for sure an automotive company should have no problem at all figuring it out.

Huh?

I mean...what evidence does the management at Hyundai have that shows them that these things aren't just YouTube stars? What teams does it have in place to start the transition from not profitable?

qnleigh• 1 month ago

Atlas would need to learn new factory tasks in a day or two and reach 99.9% reliability before it could be truly useful on the floor

Progress in robotics has been impressive, but is there any evidence that we are approaching this point? How many days are needed to teach a robot a task at even 90% reliability? Given that most companies are still only showing of demos, that number looks to be way more than 2...

ElijahLynn• 1 month ago

Wow, Cursor (parent company) gets 60 billion in SpaceX stock. But Boston Dynamics was really purchased for 1 billion by Hyundai over time. That seems way off!

gunapologist99• 1 month ago

Atlas wrote this article, didn't it?

mvkel• 1 month ago

Boston Dynamics has been the dancing robot demo company since its inception. I guess they held out long enough to cash out on a hype cycle. Well played by them.

lordmoma• 1 month ago

Boston Dynamics is the same type of cool companies that always demos but never ships.

Alien1Being2• 1 month ago

China is leading the world in robotics use in factories.

The new Qwen robotics suite is impressive.

https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen-robotsuite

hi_hi• 1 month ago

Why do many people seem to think we have solved human robots because of the advances in LLMs? We are still yet to solve 4 wheeled robots navigating a constrained environment. Are we really expecting these things to be let loose _in people’s homes_?!

quaddoggy• 1 month ago

Looking forward to a three month wait for my robot to be repaired. Basing this assumption on current vehicular maintenance times.

tychez• 1 month ago

Exactly. Atlas right now cost about $150,000 in manufacturing cost.

The upkeep cost is going to be astronomical for a very long time.

The human body gets beat up doing physical work but can self heal. The robot can not.

Accidents happen all the time doing work and the robot is not going to be as accurate as a human.

I would assume there are zero robot mechanics in the town I live.

I think we will just look back at this time as the good ol days during the peak of the bubble when buying a humanoid robot seemed like something on the horizon.

I imagine 5 years from now it will feel much further away than it does right now.

petterroea• 1 month ago

Am I the only one who feels Boston completely missed their chance and fell behind by being slow on selling robot dogs?

Chinese companies were quick to jump in and fill that unfulfilled demand. I work with robots and have never seen a Boston machine irl. Tonnes of Chinese though

siva72• 1 month ago

"demand"

vistawasgreat• 1 month ago

wow

endofreach• 1 month ago

How fucking cool would robohorses instead of cars or bikes be?

ComputerGuru• 1 month ago

Shame. Boston Dynamics is famous for having a “no using our machines for evil” policy. If you break it (eg mount weapons on their robots, even if you’re a government), they won’t sell to you.

Hyundai (the chaebol) has no such policy. They sell their heavy equipment to oppressive regimes to blatantly use in projects and efforts deemed illegal under international humanitarian law and by the International Court of Justice.

Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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