Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics, Atlas humanoid to be used at vehicle plant by 2028
Key takeaways
- Hyundai's move to buy Soft Bank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million is not just cleanup from an old deal.
- Hyundai Motor Group is expected to approve the purchase on June 22, closing out Soft Bank's last piece of Boston Dynamics and turning the Waltham, Massachusetts robotics company into a wholly owned Hyundai business.
- Hyundai paid about $880 million for an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in the 2021 transaction, valuing the company at roughly $1.1 billion at the time.
Hyundai's move to buy Soft Bank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million is not just cleanup from an old deal. It gives Hyundai full control of one of the few humanoid robotics companies with real factory work in sight.
Hyundai Motor Group is expected to approve the purchase on June 22, closing out Soft Bank's last piece of Boston Dynamics and turning the Waltham, Massachusetts robotics company into a wholly owned Hyundai business. The price is $325 million for the remaining stake, according to the deal terms, and it follows the put option SoftBank retained when Hyundai bought control of Boston Dynamics in 2021.
You should read that as a signal, not a footnote. Hyundai paid about $880 million for an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in the 2021 transaction, valuing the company at roughly $1.1 billion at the time. SoftBank had bought Boston Dynamics from Alphabet in 2017, after Google had acquired the robotics lab in 2013. It was a strange ownership path for a company whose robots became famous on YouTube long before they became obvious commercial products.