Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics is the American robotics company famous for making the most agile and acrobatic robots on Earth — humanoids that backflip, dog-like quadrupeds that climb stairs, and warehouse arms that throw 20-kilo boxes around.

A 30-year overnight success

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert, an MIT professor who had spent the 1980s building one-legged hopping robots in his Leg Lab. For most of its first two decades, the company was funded almost entirely by DARPA (the U.S. military research agency) and made experimental machines you'd see in YouTube clips but never on the market: BigDog, LittleDog, Petman, Cheetah. They were astonishing but not products.

The company has had three owners. Google bought it in 2013 (along with eight other robotics startups, in a quiet acquisition spree). Google sold it to SoftBank in 2017. SoftBank sold it to Hyundai in 2021 for about $1.1 billion — which is where it sits today.

The three product lines

Spot — a yellow, dog-shaped quadruped robot. It costs around $75,000-150,000, depending on configuration. Companies use it to inspect oil rigs, nuclear plants, construction sites, and anywhere humans shouldn't have to walk. As of 2026, around 2,000 Spots are working in the wild. It can climb stairs, open doors, and carry small payloads.

Stretch — a stationary robotic arm on wheels, designed for one job: unloading trucks. It can pick boxes from the back of a trailer and put them on a conveyor belt all day. It's about $200,000. Customers include DHL, NFI, Maersk.

Atlas — the humanoid. The acrobatic one. For most of its life Atlas was a research platform — there to push what's possible — but in 2024 Boston Dynamics retired the famous hydraulic version and announced an all-electric, commercial Atlas that will work in Hyundai factories. The electric Atlas is what you'll see going forward.

What makes BD different

For decades, most robotics companies built machines that move slowly and carefully — because mistakes are expensive. Boston Dynamics took the opposite approach: build robots that move like animals, then figure out how to make them safe later. The result is a portfolio of robots that look unsettlingly natural — and a stack of viral YouTube videos that have done more for the public imagination of robotics than any marketing campaign.

The Hyundai bet

Hyundai didn't buy Boston Dynamics for cool YouTube videos. They bought it because a car factory is a perfect home for robots like Atlas: structured, repetitive, dangerous in places, and very expensive to staff. If Atlas can do the human jobs in a Hyundai plant, the same robot can in any factory. That's the bet — and the next two or three years will say whether it pays off.

Why this matters for everyone

Boston Dynamics is the reason humanoid robotics is a real industry today. Tesla, Figure, 1X, Agility, Unitree — every modern humanoid company is, in some sense, racing the company that has been doing this for 30 years and finally has a commercial product to ship.

Curious about the most acrobatic robot on Earth? Read Atlas.