Hyundai Buys Dog Robot Company Boston Dynamics For $1.1 Billion

Boston Dynamics an engineering and robot designing company is known for designing a dog-like robot -- the Spot. Hyundai has now confirmed that it is buying Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for a whopping $1.1Billion.

Hyundai will be purchasing 80 percent of the stakes from SoftBank, which will give the company the controlling power, while the rest 20 percent of the stakes will be with the parent SoftBank.

Hyundai's Cars Might Get Smart

Hyundai is a car designing and manufacturing company and has its footprints across the globe. The company has confirmed that it will use technologies from Boston Dynamics to develop logistics robots, and the company even has plans to make humanoid robots in the near future.

The company Boston Dynamics has been established by students, faculties, and alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company in the early days made products like BigDog with DARPA funding. In the last few years, the brand made a robot-dog named Spot, which brought the brand into the limelight.

The robot-dog Spot was made available to the public for $74,500 back in June 2020. The company has sold many Spots and became profitable even in the earlier days of operation.

Why Hyundai Bought Boston Dynamics?

Car companies, including Hyundai, are working on making cars smarter with features like auto-pilot, smart driving, and a lot more. One of the peculiar features of the dog-robot is that it can detect terrines using artificial intelligence, and Hyundai might incorporate this technology into the upcoming cars.

Boston Dynamics on-the-other-hand can get benefit from Hyundai's massive R&D center to make personal robots that are more affordable and feature-rich when compared to the Spot -- the dog-robot. This new relationship is expected to help both brands to make their products better, which in return will offer more user-friendly consumer products.

Via