Chung Eui-sun's 'Big Picture' drawn through robot company Boston Dynamics

[Korea Financial Times, Gwak Ho-Ryung] The M&A (merger and acquisition) value of Boston Dynamics, a robotics company that Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun has invested his personal money in, is expected to be revealed in earnest next year.

According to a business report filed by Hyundai Globis with the Financial Supervisory Service, when Hyundai Motor Group (Hyundai Motor, Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai Glovis, etc.) signed an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics from Softbank Group in June 2021, it included a put option(right to purchase) clause that SoftBank could exercise. If Boston Dynamics fails to go public (IPO) within four years, Hyundai Motor Group will have to buy SoftBank's remaining 20% stake for $94.225 million (about KRW 129 billion).


Industry analysts believe that Boston Dynamics is unlikely to list by the promised deadline (June 2025). This is because the company needs at least six to 24 months to prepare for a U.S. listing, and Hyundai Motor Group has not made any move. In addition, the book value of the 20% stake in Boston Dynamics at the end of last year is valued at around 400 billion won. As the company's value has increased from the time of acquisition, it is not a loss-making business for Hyundai Motor Group even if the put option is triggered.

Boston Dynamics is not yet a profitable company. In fact, its losses are increasing every year. The company's revenue grew from KRW 66.7 billion in 2021 to KRW 91 billion in 2023. During the same period, the net loss grew from 196.9 billion won to 334.8 billion won. Boston Dynamics sells two products: Stretch, a robotic arm for logistics centers, and Spot, a four-legged robot dog. It sells to a few companies, but its business performance is not significant.


The 'synergy effect' emphasized by Hyundai Motor Group at the time of the acquisition is also not noticeable.

In the meantime, Hyundai has released videos of non-face-to-face medical treatment and dance videos with BTS through Spot the robot dog. The intention is to enhance its image as a company preparing for the future robot era. However, Hyundai would not have valued the company at $1.1 billion (about 1.5 trillion won) if it was only for the public relations effect, rather than full-fledged business synergy.
Hyundai has also unveiled wearable robots, service bots, and future mobility platforms through its own robotics organization, Robotics Lab, but there is no evidence of collaboration with Boston Dynamics. In fact, even when Boston Dynamics was owned by Google and SoftBank, it focused on independent R&D rather than collaboration.

The most promising area for synergy is humanoid robots. In April, Boston Dynamics unveiled a new version of Atlas, a humanoid robot designed with an electric drive. "The electric Atlas is capable of lifting and moving a variety of heavier and irregularly shaped objects than the existing hydraulic Atlas," the company said in a press release. While the existing Atlas was more of a research and development effort to create a variety of movements, the new Atlas is being developed with commercial goals in mind.



The first customer for the new Atlas is Hyundai Motor Company. Hyundai is looking to revolutionize manufacturing by replacing repetitive human tasks with robots in its factories.
"The New Atlas will play a big role for Hyundai Motor Group, which is looking to transform manufacturing, with the goal of validating the technology at a Hyundai Motor Group plant in early 2025," Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Plater told Spectrum at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

There is also a possibility that Hyundai will mass-produce the robots and sell them externally. Hyundai Motor Group's manufacturing technology innovation testbed, the Hyundai Motor Global Innovation Center in Singapore (HMGICS), is also reportedly conducting research to produce robots.

In this case, Hyundai Motor Group is likely to compete with Tesla in the robot commercialization race. Tesla has piloted two of its own humanoid bots, called Optimus, in its factories this year. "We hope to have Optimus in (Tesla's) factories next year, and we hope to be able to sell it externally by 2026," Tesla CEO Elon Musk told his X last month.

Gwak Ho-Ryung (horr@fntimes.com)