Hyundai can leverage the robotic know-how to increase automation at its unionised automobile factories, in addition to design autonomous autos like self-driving automobiles, drones and supply robots, analysts mentioned.
The transfer comes after newly-promoted chairman Euisun Chung pledged to scale back reliance on conventional automobile manufacturing, saying robotics will account for 20% of the corporate’s future enterprise, with car-making taking on 50%, adopted by city air mobility at 30%.
Chung will personal a 20% stake in Boston Dynamics, whereas Hyundai Motor and its associates, Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai Glovis, will maintain a mixed 60% stake, two individuals mentioned, asking to not be recognized as a result of the matter is confidential. One of many sources confirmed the worth of the deal.
Hyundai Motor and SoftBank declined to remark.
“The acquisition would assist Hyundai provide a seamless strategy to items supply with the assistance of supply robots and driverless autos similar to automobiles and planes,” Koh Tae-bong, an analyst at Hello Funding & Securities.
“However Hyundai must show that Boston Dynamics might be commercially profitable and is able to competing with cheaper Chinese language rivals,” he mentioned.
The corporate’s merchandise embrace Spot, a four-legged dog-like robotic that may climb stairs, and have gained media consideration even because it has struggled to construct a industrial enterprise.
Boston Dynamics, which was spun out from the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how in 1992, was purchased by Google in 2013 and bought to SoftBank in 2017.
Purchasers embrace Ford Motor Co, which leased two Spot robots in July as a part of a pilot programme.
Final 12 months, Ford Motor mentioned that it was partnering with strolling robots maker Agility Robotics because it designs a deliberate fleet of self-driving supply vans that can drop packages on the doorsteps of individuals’s properties.
The Hyundai Motor Group is predicted to announce the acquisition in a while Friday, after getting approval from boards at every of the three models, two different individuals have mentioned.
The deal is the newest pullback by SoftBank from working companies as CEO Masayoshi Son focuses on investing.
It additionally marks the fading of SoftBank’s robotics ambitions, which had been talked up by Son, and leaves the group’s personal rump robotics enterprise, which incorporates humanoid robotic Pepper, trying more and more remoted.
For Hyundai, that is the newest in a flurry of offers beneath Chung, who pledged to remodel the automaker right into a mobility supplier, amid threats from electrical carmaker Tesla and tech companies with ride-sharing, self-driving and different applied sciences.
“Automakers are in an innovation race. Hyundai is a late-comer to the race, and it appears that evidently they need to showcase that they’ll do it, fairly than attempting to generate cash from the robots enterprise,” mentioned mobility guide Cha Doo-won.
Hyundai Motor has developed a wearable robotic to scale back fatigue for manufacturing facility staff and ran pilot programmes at its U.S. crops.
In January, Hyundai Motor introduced it had partnered with Uber to develop electrical air taxis, however the U.S. agency mentioned earlier this week it could promote its loss-making flying taxi unit to Joby Aviation, an electrical passenger plane developer.
