Hyundai Motor deal with SoftBank for Boston Dynamics stake is as wild as the robot videos

By Steve Goldstein

SoftBank selling stake in Boston Dynamics at valuation far less than what Hyundai values the robotics maker

A Boston Dynamics quadruped robot named Scout is tested at the Lincoln Memorial on July 02, 2026 in Washington, DC. Hyundai Motor said it's going to get full control over the robotics company.

Hyundai Motor may have just struck an incredible bargain - or maybe SoftBank is hard up for cash.

The bargain, or not, is the robotic company Boston Dynamics, best known for those funky videos of robot dogs that appear on the internet every so often and scare everyone out of their mind.

Hyundai Motor (KR:005380) on Wednesday said it will purchase the Boston Dynamics stake held by SoftBank (JP:9984), after the Japanese company exercised a put option that it had as part of a deal initially agreed in 2020.

Back then, Hyundai bought an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank at a valuation of $1.1 billion. SoftBank's stake, then 20%, has been watered down to 9.65% as it didn't participate in subsequent fund rounds by Boston Dynamics, whose Atlas won "best robot" at CES 2026.

No financial terms were disclosed, but Korean media is reporting Hyundai is paying roughly $325 million.

"Hyundai Motor Group and Boston Dynamics will continue working together to strengthen competitiveness in robotics and advance the development of AI-powered robotics technologies and related ecosystems," said the automaker.

Hyundai's control of Boston Dynamics is spread out between its many subsidiaries as well as Euisun Chung, then and now the company's executive chairman.

Last year, Hyundai Glovis (KR:086280) paid 89.1 billion won to increase its stake in Boston Dynamics by 0.3 percentage points, which implies a valuation of $20 billion for Boston Dynamics.

Analysts that cover Hyundai Motor generally assign a valuation to Boston Dynamics higher than that - HSBC's latest model, for examples, suggests a valuation for the robotics company of $26 billion.

So that means that SoftBank is selling the Boston Dynamics stake at a valuation of some $3 billion - which is quite a gap.

It's all the more fascinating because Hyundai is reportedly considering an initial public offering of Boston Dynamics as early as next year, which would've allowed SoftBank to exit, at least in part, likely at a higher valuation.

In May, analysts at Morgan Stanley estimated that a future Boston Dynamics IPO could potentially raise as much as 22 trillion won, about $15 billion.

That said, analysts at Bank of America said there should be caution around a possible IPO, given the absence of top management leadership after the resignation of then-CEO Robert Playter in February and limited visibility into its order diversification beyond Hyundai.

SoftBank, for its part, has for months been reported to have been seeking a loan backed by its stake in OpenAI.

-Steve Goldstein

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07-16-26 0549ET