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Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of oper

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of operations.

irjustin 6y ago
Agreed when you think of them as a normal business. it's bonkers, but if you're looking at it as a R&D shop - closer to pharma or biotech, it's less crazy (still a little crazy tho). That's why it can really on be funded by guys like Alphabet who can take these R&D hits. The bet really looks something iRobot - Every household has a robot servant/maid that's made by Boston Dynamics. Some of the more recent videos make me want to believe it's within my lifetime. I love watching the documentaries (parodies) of how we get to Skynet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RIHnK0_NE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RIHnK0_NE
smabie 6y ago
And people claim the markets/VCs are too short-termist. If anything, the opposite is true.
- onion2k 6y ago
  I don't think it's wise to extrapolation the intentions of VCs from a single example, especially when there are tens of thousands of counter examples.
- ackbar03 6y ago
  I don't think their main funding is from vc? As mentioned above it's darpa contracts before internalized within Google so quite the opposite it seems
- rexreed 6y ago
  The markets and VC are too short-termist for things like this. The failure of many VC-funded robotics companies is evidence of this. Rethink Robotics. Jibo. Anki. I can keep going. The VCs ran out of patience long before the product gained market traction. And Boston Dynamics is not an exception. Government funded primarily until 2013 when it was acquired by Google. Google then didn't have the stomach to continue to fund it, so they sold it to Softbank.[1] [1] https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-google-sold-boston-dynamics-to-softbank/ https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-googl...
accurrent 6y ago
As someone who is in the field of mobile robotics, what Boston Dynamics does is often way ahead of its time. Robotics is hard and expensive. If you are developing a new form of locomotion it will take years and millions of dollars before things work out. Heck, I myself have seen my colleagues spend 10+ years just ironing out issues with underwater vehicles before they even see the market.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  Yeah. But the bewilderment isn’t a technical one, it’s a business one. You’d think 30 years of unprofitable future tech would happen at a university or the military or some skunkworks operation for a massive company. Though I’m sure quite a bit of their funding is military.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Boston dynamics has been all 3 of those... currently a skunkworks
    - boromi 6y ago
      why? what's happening that makes you say that
  - Animats 6y ago
    It was, before Google. It cost about US$120 million to get Big Dog working. At least those were the reported DARPA contract amounts.
    - amelius 6y ago
      Funny because yesterday there was a post on HN from a guy who made a DIY robot that looked very much like a small Big Dog. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24484129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24484129
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
laurent92 6y ago
> haven’t had one year of profitability Also, beyond stakeholder investment, the contracts they had were often government contracts, or when in private companies it would be R&D, i.e. all made “at a loss” (until BR finds the right sauce).
markdown 6y ago
> 30 years ago Wow, that's long enough that their earliest patents would have expired by now.
unixhero 6y ago
US Government funded.
me_me_me 6y ago
"Hi BD, here is $X if you poke around area Y so we can see if its feasible for the future." Its easy to imagine they are operating as a test-bed company for ideas for the investor/3rd party/military. Before a real investment can happen they are used to prototype any 'far out' ideas.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
Looking at the company's history it seems that it was pretty much a military research outfit for a long time.
nullsense 6y ago
There are several movies about robot uprisings etc and they often feature a mega corporation whose business is loosely speaking robotics. I can picture that being Boston Dynamics when the robot uprising happens for real. Those companies are always on top of the world in those movies, so maybe it will pan out after all.
capekwasright 6y ago
Many don't realize that for the first ~decade of its existence, BD was not the robotics/hardware business, but rather developed and sold human simulation software. Their main product, DI-Guy[1], was a modest success, and eventually provided the underpinnings for BD's core biomechanics sim tools. When they got back into the hardware business in the early 2000's, those projects were primarily funded by DARPA/DOD contracts, but the steady income stream provided by e.g. DI-Guy helped fill the gaps between contracts, allowing them to run a business that, though lean, stayed in the black. Eventually, as a part of the Google acquisition, DI-Guy was divested to VT MAK, another local company in the modeling/sim software business [2]. Source: former employee that worked at BD for the better part of a decade from the mid 00's to late 10's [1]: https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/di-guy https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/di-guy [2]: https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/70-landing-pages-1/landing-events/555-di-guy-is-now-part-of-vt-mak https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/70-landing-pages-1/la...
WhompingWindows 6y ago
They're basically a research and development firm. How many research teams do you know that are actually "profitable"? Money goes into research because it may pay dividends in a few decades, not because it's profitable in the first couple of decades.

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992. That was almost 30 years ago. Just me, or is it crazy they haven't had 1 year of profitability in nearly 3 decades of operations.

irjustin 6y ago

Agreed when you think of them as a normal business. it's bonkers, but if you're looking at it as a R&D shop - closer to pharma or biotech, it's less crazy (still a little crazy tho). That's why it can really on be funded by guys like Alphabet who can take these R&D hits. The bet really looks something iRobot - Every household has a robot servant/maid that's made by Boston Dynamics. Some of the more recent videos make me want to believe it's within my lifetime. I love watching the documentaries (parodies) of how we get to Skynet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RIHnK0_NE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RIHnK0_NE

smabie 6y ago

And people claim the markets/VCs are too short-termist. If anything, the opposite is true.

onion2k 6y ago
I don't think it's wise to extrapolation the intentions of VCs from a single example, especially when there are tens of thousands of counter examples.
ackbar03 6y ago
I don't think their main funding is from vc? As mentioned above it's darpa contracts before internalized within Google so quite the opposite it seems
rexreed 6y ago
The markets and VC are too short-termist for things like this. The failure of many VC-funded robotics companies is evidence of this. Rethink Robotics. Jibo. Anki. I can keep going. The VCs ran out of patience long before the product gained market traction. And Boston Dynamics is not an exception. Government funded primarily until 2013 when it was acquired by Google. Google then didn't have the stomach to continue to fund it, so they sold it to Softbank.[1] [1] https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-google-sold-boston-dynamics-to-softbank/ https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/06/09/its-no-wonder-googl...

accurrent 6y ago

As someone who is in the field of mobile robotics, what Boston Dynamics does is often way ahead of its time. Robotics is hard and expensive. If you are developing a new form of locomotion it will take years and millions of dollars before things work out. Heck, I myself have seen my colleagues spend 10+ years just ironing out issues with underwater vehicles before they even see the market.

Waterluvian 6y ago
Yeah. But the bewilderment isn’t a technical one, it’s a business one. You’d think 30 years of unprofitable future tech would happen at a university or the military or some skunkworks operation for a massive company. Though I’m sure quite a bit of their funding is military.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Boston dynamics has been all 3 of those... currently a skunkworks
  - boromi 6y ago
    why? what's happening that makes you say that
- Animats 6y ago
  It was, before Google. It cost about US$120 million to get Big Dog working. At least those were the reported DARPA contract amounts.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Funny because yesterday there was a post on HN from a guy who made a DIY robot that looked very much like a small Big Dog. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24484129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24484129
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

laurent92 6y ago

> haven’t had one year of profitability Also, beyond stakeholder investment, the contracts they had were often government contracts, or when in private companies it would be R&D, i.e. all made “at a loss” (until BR finds the right sauce).

markdown 6y ago

> 30 years ago Wow, that's long enough that their earliest patents would have expired by now.

unixhero 6y ago

US Government funded.

me_me_me 6y ago

"Hi BD, here is $X if you poke around area Y so we can see if its feasible for the future." Its easy to imagine they are operating as a test-bed company for ideas for the investor/3rd party/military. Before a real investment can happen they are used to prototype any 'far out' ideas.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

Looking at the company's history it seems that it was pretty much a military research outfit for a long time.

nullsense 6y ago

There are several movies about robot uprisings etc and they often feature a mega corporation whose business is loosely speaking robotics. I can picture that being Boston Dynamics when the robot uprising happens for real. Those companies are always on top of the world in those movies, so maybe it will pan out after all.

capekwasright 6y ago

Many don't realize that for the first ~decade of its existence, BD was not the robotics/hardware business, but rather developed and sold human simulation software. Their main product, DI-Guy[1], was a modest success, and eventually provided the underpinnings for BD's core biomechanics sim tools. When they got back into the hardware business in the early 2000's, those projects were primarily funded by DARPA/DOD contracts, but the steady income stream provided by e.g. DI-Guy helped fill the gaps between contracts, allowing them to run a business that, though lean, stayed in the black. Eventually, as a part of the Google acquisition, DI-Guy was divested to VT MAK, another local company in the modeling/sim software business [2]. Source: former employee that worked at BD for the better part of a decade from the mid 00's to late 10's [1]: https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/di-guy https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/di-guy [2]: https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/70-landing-pages-1/landing-events/555-di-guy-is-now-part-of-vt-mak https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/70-landing-pages-1/la...

WhompingWindows 6y ago

They're basically a research and development firm. How many research teams do you know that are actually "profitable"? Money goes into research because it may pay dividends in a few decades, not because it's profitable in the first couple of decades.