Hyundai acquires majority stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics
(Reuters) — Hyundai and its chair maintain agreed to take hang of an 80% stake in robot maker Boston Dynamics from SoftBank, Hyundai mentioned on Friday.
Hyundai mentioned the deal values the robot firm at $1.1 billion, suggesting the automaker crew offered $880 million for the 80% stake.
Hyundai can leverage robot skills to magnify automation at its unionized car factories, as properly as designing self sustaining autos fancy self-utilizing autos, drones, and provide robots, analysts mentioned.
The unusual stake comes after newly promoted Hyundai chair Euisun Chung pledged to diminish reliance on broken-down car manufacturing, announcing robotics would myth for 20% of the corporate’s future industry, with car-making taking on 50%, followed by urban air mobility at 30%.
Chung will accept as true with a 20% stake in Boston Dynamics, whereas Hyundai Motor and its affiliates, Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai Glovis, will preserve a blended 60% stake.
“The transaction will unite capabilities of Hyundai Motor Neighborhood and Boston Dynamics to spearhead innovation in future mobility,” Chung mentioned in a commentary.
Boston Dynamics, which was spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Abilities in 1992, was offered by Google in 2013 and sold to SoftBank in 2017.
The corporate’s products encompass Region — a four-legged dog-fancy robot that can climb stairs — and maintain won media consideration whilst it struggled to invent a industrial industry.
Consumers encompass Ford, which leased two Region robots in July as a part of a pilot program.
“Hyundai wants to repeat that Boston Dynamics may perhaps perchance most likely even be commercially successful and is in a position to competing with more affordable Chinese language competitors,” Hi Investment & Securities analyst Koh Tae-bong mentioned.
‘Innovate fade’
Final One year, Ford mentioned it was partnering with strolling robot maker Agility Robotics because it designs a planned immediate of self-utilizing provide autos that will drop packages at the doorsteps of of us’s homes.
The deal is the most up-to-date pullback by SoftBank from running agencies as CEO Masayoshi Son specializes in investing.
It also marks the fading of SoftBank’s robotics ambitions, that had been talked up by Son, and leaves the crew’s accept as true with rump robotics industry, which incorporates humanoid robot Pepper, taking a build apart a question to an increasing style of isolated.
For Hyundai, right here’s the most up-to-date in a flurry of affords below Chung, who pledged to remodel the automaker into a mobility provider, amid threats from electric carmaker Tesla and tech firms with journey-sharing, self-utilizing, and completely different technologies.
“Automakers are in an innovation fade. Hyundai is a leisurely-comer to the fade, and it looks to be they deserve to showcase that they’ll end it, rather than making an try to generate money from the robot industry,” mobility consultant Cha Doo-won mentioned.
Hyundai Motor has developed a wearable robot to diminish fatigue for factory workers and ran pilot programs at its U.S. vegetation.
In January, Hyundai Motor launched it had partnered with Uber to set apart electric air taxis, but the U.S. firm mentioned this week it may perhaps perchance most likely sell its loss-making flying taxi unit to Joby Aviation, an electric passenger plane developer.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Heekyong Yang. Additional reporting by Kane Wu and Sam Nussey. Enhancing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Robert Birsel.)