<story><title>Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics for nearly $1B</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/hyundai-buys-boston-dynamics</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stefan_</author><text>Feels like we said this about previous buyers. All I&amp;#x27;m seeing is another sucker to keep the money rolling for more of these sweet viral robot demos that never seem to materialize into much of anything.</text></item><item><author>6a74</author><text>Makes sense. South Korea, where Hyundai is based, has by far the most robots per manufacturing employee [1]. They will make good use of the technology.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;specials-images.forbesimg.com&amp;#x2F;imageserve&amp;#x2F;5f719cf9f44706e499144241&amp;#x2F;960x0.jpg?fit=scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;specials-images.forbesimg.com&amp;#x2F;imageserve&amp;#x2F;5f719cf9f44...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tooltalk</author><text>The two previous buyers, Google and Softbank, didn&amp;#x27;t have much presence in robotics, unlike Hyundai.  Hyundai recently spun off the automation business to a separate company, Hyundai Robotics, early last year.</text></comment>
<story><title>Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics for nearly $1B</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/hyundai-buys-boston-dynamics</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stefan_</author><text>Feels like we said this about previous buyers. All I&amp;#x27;m seeing is another sucker to keep the money rolling for more of these sweet viral robot demos that never seem to materialize into much of anything.</text></item><item><author>6a74</author><text>Makes sense. South Korea, where Hyundai is based, has by far the most robots per manufacturing employee [1]. They will make good use of the technology.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;specials-images.forbesimg.com&amp;#x2F;imageserve&amp;#x2F;5f719cf9f44706e499144241&amp;#x2F;960x0.jpg?fit=scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;specials-images.forbesimg.com&amp;#x2F;imageserve&amp;#x2F;5f719cf9f44...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>orzig</author><text>Keep in mind that “previous buyers” is a very small sample size,  and there are a huge number of contributing variables. It is certainly not guaranteed to work out, but given the value of  really nailing a leap in the space, the price does not seem like an unreasonable gamble</text></comment>