Famous robot-maker Boston Dynamics may be switching owners once again. According to information from Bloomberg, South Korean firm Hyundai may be buying the robot-maker from SoftBank. If the deal does go ahead, Hyundai could be buying the company for up to $1 billion from SoftBank.
The terms or agreements of the possible sale have not yet been finalized, and the deal may never come to fruition due to different factors. Also, representatives for Boston Dynamics, Hyundai, and SoftBank declined to comment on the deal talks, as per Bloomberg.
Hyundai’s possible interest in the robot maker is not necessarily a surprise. The South Korean automaker also currently has a division entirely dedicated to the development of industrial robots, in which case Boston Dynamics’ solutions and technologies would fit perfectly.
Boston Dynamics came out in the early 1990s as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and continued to operate independently until it was purchased by Google in 2013. With Google as the owner, Boston Dynamics focused more on research and development than on commercialization. In 2017, it was sold to the Japanese company SoftBank and began to focus more on marketing its robots. The “robot dog” Spot can now be found for around $75,000.
