SoftBank sells controlling stake found in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai
SoftBank Group will offer an 80 percent stake found in robotics firm Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, the trio said Friday, in a deal that values the U.S. company at $1.1 billion.
Boston Dynamics has drawn huge attention with viral videos of its humanoid and dog-like robots, whose uncanny movements and impressive tricks have helped stoke fears that androids could 1 day turn into a threat to humans.
The engineering firm was founded in 1992 and bought in 2013 by Google, which sold the business on to SoftBank three years ago.
The Japanese conglomerate could keep a 20 percent stake through among its affiliates and can use South Korea's Hyundai to "propel production and commercialisation of advanced robots", the firms said.
The financial conditions of the deal weren't disclosed. It is likely to close by June 2021, the statement stated.
Boston Dynamics has won attention for creations like Atlas, a humanoid robot that can run on various kinds of surfaces and perform backflips, and Spot, its initially commercial robot -- a nimble four-legged machine that movements such as a dog and continued sale in the summertime.
The firm's chairman Marc Raibert told AFP in 2019 that the fascination and fear sparked by such life-like robots had not been "realistic".
"There's (a) fear, which is more a science-fiction fear that the robots will be so smart that they can be angry with us. I don't believe it's realistic in the current robots," he said.
Source: japantoday.com
