Hyundai to Buy Out SoftBank's Last Boston Dynamics Stake: Atlas Robots Head to the Assembly Line
North Atlantic Treaty Organization / www.nato.int
Hyundai Motor Group is set to take full ownership of Boston Dynamics, paying around $325 million for SoftBank's remaining stake as Atlas robots head to a Georgia car plant.
Hyundai Motor Group has agreed to take full control of Boston Dynamics. The Korean automaker will buy out SoftBank’s remaining stake of around 10%, making the American robotics developer a wholly owned subsidiary. Official terms haven’t been disclosed, but South Korean media previously valued the stake at roughly 500 billion won — about $325 million.
The purchase isn’t just an investment in a promising technology. Hyundai plans to put Boston Dynamics’ work directly into car production. The first Atlas humanoid robots are expected to arrive at the group’s plant in Georgia, USA, in 2028.
In the early stage, Atlas will be tasked with sequencing parts in the correct order before they reach the assembly line — repetitive work that involves moving components, checking their placement, and preparing workstations. By 2030, Hyundai plans to expand the robot’s role to include assembling individual vehicle components.
That doesn’t mean the plant is shifting to fully autonomous production. Deploying humanoids at scale will require proven grip reliability, precise movement, safety around human workers, and the ability to switch between tasks without long stoppages. The cost of maintaining the robots also needs to come in below the cost of specialized industrial equipment built for each individual operation.
Hyundai first acquired a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics back in 2021. Full ownership should let it align robotics development with its factories’ needs more quickly, rather than stopping at demo units. Besides Atlas, the company also has the four-legged Spot robot and the Stretch warehouse system, already built for moving cargo.
For the auto industry, what matters isn’t how human Atlas looks, but whether one platform can be used across different stages of production. If a robot can be reprogrammed to move from sorting parts to assembling components, a plant won’t need a separate automated system for every new model.
