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Back in December 2020, Hyundai purchased an 80% controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million, part of a transaction that valued the ro
by giwook 4mo ago
Back in December 2020, Hyundai purchased an 80% controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million, part of a transaction that valued the robotics company at $1.1 billion. That agreement included a put option allowing SoftBank to sell its remaining stake to Hyundai at a later date.
SoftBank has now exercised that option.
- Animats 4mo agoOh. It's Softbank exiting humanoid robotics at Softbank's discretion. That's a lot different than " Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics". Hyundai bought them years ago. This is just the last 8%.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoSeems like a mistake. AI in its current form has limited usefulness for most people. Not something I would pay for to use outside of work. But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that.
- whiplash451 4mo ago> Not something I would pay for to use outside of work You wouldn't but apparently your employer would. I don't disagree with you on robotics, though. For an empire like softbank, not buying an "insurance against the rise of robotics" also seems like a mistake to me. That being said, they may expect robotics to rise through self-driving cars (hence their investment in Wayve).
- fragmede 4mo agoAll of finance is trading money for time. $1 million today vs $100,000 for the next ten years. Softbank needs the money today vs later.
- OtherShrezzing 4mo ago> robot maid that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, etc. would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that. Once you take maintenance of a machine with price-parity to a new car into consideration, it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things. The price needs to fall drastically below new-car territory before it’s competitive with manual human labour.
- Forgeties79 4mo agoIf you're paying cash/under the table, then maybe. But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. If you're not under the table, you're paying payroll taxes, probably paying for a payroll service, etc. so you're talking $2000+. At best you can maybe stay under $20k a year. When you really look at the economics of it, a robot that never gets sick/doesn't require payroll/etc. makes a lot more sense.
- dh2022 4mo agoWho spends new-car money to clean their homes? Maybe ultra high net worth individuals? I know people with 8 figures net worth who spend a fraction of that money for cleaning their homes.
- Danox 4mo agoNone...
- Forgeties79 4mo agoGiven the current context the presumption would be you have somebody coming 2 to 3 days a week. Are you telling me somebody’s going to come work for you for less than $100 a day 2-3 days a week? Why would they even take the gig?
- dh2022 4mo agoMy point is even 8 figures net worth individuals do not pay for someone to clean their house 2-3 times a week.
- thegrim33 4mo agoWell, that assumes that if you just keep throwing more data and compute at large language models you'll end up with something akin to AGI to control those robots. Which is far from guaranteed.
- onraglanroad 4mo agoNo, you're assuming that you need AGI to control a robot, when LLMs have already shown you don't need anything close to hold a conversation. So why do you suddenly think you need it for controlling a body when animals do it with far less?
- AngryData 4mo agoBut an animal has way more intelligence than an LLM? And unlike a chatbot, I can't delude myself into thinking it has done my laundry or fed my dog just because it tossed some clothes halfway into the washer without soap or spilled dog food on the floor. Unlike code, you can't just simply edit real life mistakes after the fact and call it good. My carpet can't be magically unstained, my glasses unbroken, or my dog or child unsmashed by the falling robot that had a bug fly in to a sensor at the wrong moment.
- fragmede 4mo agoLLMs aren't the specific architecture you'd use, but it very much looks like a tractable engineering problem to go from a university research lab project that can manage to fold clothes as a demo that needs to be played at 8x speed, to a sellable consumer product. The timeline is gonna be off, so no one knows if it's gonna take 3 years or 30, but it's not going to take an unknown breakthrough in materials science and physics the same way that nuclear fusion looks like it will require.
- TeMPOraL 4mo agoLLMs already solved the "System 2" part of this, to borrow from Kahneman, it's the "System 1" part that's lagging behind here. Current Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT is more than enough to tell a robot what chores to do, what to do with a thing, how, where to put it, etc. but what's still missing is the ability to reliably translate those goals to movements of a robot in diverse and tight environment that is a typical house or apartment, with any kind of reliability and safety.
- Reason077 4mo ago> ”maybe even be a chauffeur” Cars will be able to safely drive themselves autonomously well before there is a humanoid robot capable of safely driving non-autonomous cars.
- browsingonly 4mo ago> AI in its current form has limited usefulness for most people. That's not what I'm seeing. My mom always wanted Google to just answer questions, and now ChatGPT can. She uses it enough in her daily life that she bought a subscription. Yes, she knows it hallucinates and you have to double check everything, but so far she finds a ton of use for it even with those caveats. Now, I agree that a personal servant robot would get a ton of business. Even at new-car prices, it's still cheaper than a human caretaker/maid/butler/etc. And the maid usually doesn't also mow the lawn on a hot day, while a robot would potentially do all kinds of different things without complaint.
- Benlovescnn 4mo agoYou're honestly comparing a computer that can poorly answer questions to a fully functioning robot that does chores?
- iammjm 4mo agoWell, one of those is already a reality in each persons pocket, and the other is a vision needing a lot of money and effort to implement at all
- Benlovescnn 4mo ago[flagged]
- temecula 4mo ago[dead]
- szundi 4mo ago[dead]
- fullstop 4mo agoI have a feeling that humanoid robots will have other, more intimate, tasks first. Our most primal drives seem to drive the advancement of technology. Also, mowing the lawn on a very hot day is pretty bad for the grass.
- glaslong 4mo agoIs there any sign beyond flashy demos that humanoid robots will be functionally feasible though (before we even get to economically feasible)? I know there's tons of activity on humanoid teleoperation data collection, and motion model training, but it hasn't seemed to bear out much of anything. Like.... AI would be great if I could put it into a magical semi-corporeal familiar but I'm just not seeing a path to those either.
- SecretDreams 4mo agoNow how about a household robot that does all those things and is controlled by an Elon Musk company or by some other completely benevolent techno oligarch?
- hn_throwaway_99 4mo ago> But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge. Except they can't. I get it, merging advanced AI with robotics has made huge leaps in the past few years, but building a truly autonomous laundry robot is an incredibly difficult problem that still feels many years away. And I've seen all the "folding robots" over the past few years, and they are still miles away from being useful in your average home (they only "fold" if pieces are handed to them one-by-one, or the more advanced ones that can pick out clothes from a pile look like they were folded by a 3 year old). Also, consider that all-in-one washer/dryer combos have existed for a while, but they are still a teeny percentage of washer sales because they're expensive and require more maintenance. There is a surprisingly low threshold on what people are willing to pay for labor saving devices.
- clayhacks 4mo agoGetting to a cheap household helper robot requires building the expensive one. I don’t think Boston dynamics believes any reasonable consumer would buy their atlas robot, but by building it and scaling its production in industrial use cases they will learn things that make building a cheaper one much easier. And they will have built some factories to mass produce them. It’s not something that will be in everyone’s home next year, but sooner or later the robot hardware and robot intelligence will both be cheap enough to be accessible by average people (at least in the developed world)
- chadash 4mo ago> There is a surprisingly low threshold on what people are willing to pay for labor saving devices. A lot of people gladly pay humans to launder their clothes, so the market is there. But the current iteration of wash/dry combo machines doesn’t solve the main issue. I don’t mind transferring my clothes from the washer to the dryer, because that takes 60 seconds. It’s folding and putting away the clothes that makes laundry a chore.
- deadbabe 4mo agoThere are machines that already do those things. And if you’re rich enough to afford and maintain these humanoid robots, you would probably just hire staff already. The only way I could see these AI robots take off is if on top of all those things, it could also perform sexual favors and develop personalities for people to bond with. Robosexuals would buy these primarily for those features and then household duties as nice plausible deniability.
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoI would be more worried about the Chinese owning this market (like they did with robovacs) and not leaving much for Korea/USA outside of the defense market. We are still 5 years away from a general purpose functional household robot, but the rate of advances, even if they slow down substantially, will get us there.
- Danox 4mo agoThe west can compete but lack the will to do so see the consumer drone market, note that attitude had better change or else the rest of the century is going to be hell.
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoOh yes. We definitely have anti-intellectualism and a defeatist attitude to get over, or China will be the sole preeminent power very very soon
- varispeed 4mo agoI think they would sell like hot cakes if they had attachments to also do mrs and mr after the chores ;-)
- Mistletoe 4mo agoDon’t you think SoftBank has more insight and a ground level view on their own investment though?
- Danox 4mo agoSoftBank at times seems to be clueless with some of their investments, Arm Holdings was their best however...
- jayd16 4mo agoOk but that is pure fantasy.
- kevin_thibedeau 4mo agoThey're not making household robots. They have a factory robot that only needs to operate in a controlled environment and boost profitability.
- tootie 4mo agoWe're probably still decades away from that kind of robot. And I firmly believe the domestic robot revolution will not involve any humanoids. It'll be a few purpose-built machines that resemble nothing organic.
- taneq 4mo ago> But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry […] Agreed. Boston Dynamics’ focus has always been more on industrial uses, though, and while they’re getting to the point where eg. Atlas might be useful in a factory environment, they’re still a ‘premium’ supplier. Seeing some of the stuff coming from Unitree and other competitors, SoftBank might be wondering if BD can stay in the game.
- kdheiwns 4mo agoSoftBank has a history of making investment decisions that are the absolute opposite of good. I'm always bewildered as to how they still exist since they make nothing but absolute blunders.
- Reason077 4mo agoExactly. Headline is just missing the “[2020]” qualifier.
- r721 4mo agoWell, the original story title is "Hyundai takes full control of Boston Dynamics as SoftBank exits for $325 million".
- tkfoss 4mo agodang, please fix :p
- fitsumbelay 4mo agoBut an accurate headline would only reveal a meh-burger and narrow its reach. Can't have that, now ...
- echelon 4mo agoWhy is SoftBank getting out now when every VC is all about "embodied AI"? Seems like the only companies VCs want to fund now are robotics, energy, and chips. That "software AI" has had its run.
- downrightmike 4mo agoSoftbank is bleeding money and they need cash, AI isn't shaping up to what they thought it would be
- letmevoteplease 4mo agoNot sure how to square this post with recent headlines like "SoftBank posts $46 billion gain at Vision Fund driven mainly by massive OpenAI bet".
- iterateoften 4mo agoPaper money vs cash
- avianlyric 4mo agoSoftBank hold huge positions in companies like OpenAI, funded using debt. The interest on those loans is killing them, and until OpenAI actually IPOs and SoftBank can sell their stake, they have to pay that interest using cash from somewhere else.
- warumdarum 4mo agoSometimes the first one to leave the casino is the last one to join an add hoc concert playing "smoke on the water" for the first time
- edm0nd 4mo agodidnt they get absolutely rekt on WeWork? How are they still able to be a thing
- dgellow 4mo agoThat feels so low of a price when compared to the insane valuation people attribute to Tesla robots
- gowld 4mo agoThe insane valuation is for Elon meme vibes and the "vision" of "colonizing Mars", not any of the products.
- criddell 4mo agoYesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.
- skipants 4mo agoBecause it is. The average (and above-average?) investor really does not understand tech.
- dehugger 4mo agoI was trying to think about the why with Cursor, and the only thing that makes sense to me is they wanted experts in making harnesses so that they can pivot that expertise towards building harnesses intended for autonomous agents to use instead of humans. There's no world where a 60 billion IDE makes sense.
- lokimedes 4mo agoNot just an IDE, look at the prospect, they’ll soon lead in farming, genetics, AGI and teleportation. Remember to price in the TAM of that!
- chairmansteve 4mo agoTime travel!
- monocasa 4mo ago
- thewhitetulip 4mo agoThank you. I felt like I was having deja vu because I remember reading this headline This is the same thing about spacex buying cursor That news was also published twice!
- flgb 4mo agoMeanwhile SoftBank buys ABB’s robotics business .. https://group.softbank/en/news/press/20251008 https://group.softbank/en/news/press/20251008
- fooker 4mo agoSoftBank’s investment plays have largely been comically wrong. This is a good hint that robots are really about to take off.
- kijin 4mo agoHumanoid (or dogoid) robot hardware on its own offers no benefits over non-humanoid factory machines. It just has fancy firmware controlling its motions. Humanoid robots loaded with an AI agent, on the other hand, could actually make you a sudo sandwich, do your laundry, or help you with that weekend project in the backyard. They're finally about to get useful. I'm not a fan of humanoid robots personally (they creep me out), but I'd love to have a functional R2-D2 with me.
- fooker 4mo ago> offers no benefits over non-humanoid factory machines. The value proposition is being able to fit in and navigate spaces built for humans without complete overhauls. Stuff like small elevators, workbenches, server racks, etc. > functional R2-D2 It would be pretty amazing to buy a kit with the hardware for this and be able to put your own software in it!!