Japan’s big-betting holding firm SoftBank is buying Boston Dynamics, one of the most highly regarded robotics labs in the world, from Google’s parent company Alphabet, for an undisclosed price.
Google acquired Boston Dynamics in 2013 under the leadership of Andy Rubin, the co-inventor of Android, who was leading a wave of acquisitions of robotics companies under the search giant.
Boston Dynamics’ robots routinely make headlines, including a high-profile demo at this year’s TED conference. The company, led by CEO Marc Raibert, has made a robotic cheetah that can run 28 miles per hour, a robotic dog that it recently used to deliver packages to doorsteps in Boston, and most recently a massive legged and wheeled robot that can clear hurdles and walk down stairs.
The firm has been hailed by other roboticists for its ability to blend hardware and artificial intelligence to make machines capable of dynamic, agile movements. Its most recent wheeled robot, Handle, can manipulate objects that are comparable to its own weight, and its four-legged, animal-like robots can maneuver over different types of terrain.
One industry source said earlier this year that Boston Dynamics’ most recent machine “changes the whole ballgame.”
SoftBank is also buying Schaft, a Japan-based robotics firm that unveiled a bipedal walking robot last year, from Alphabet. A source close to the matter said Schaft, which was part of Google, never fully integrated into the company and operated as a sort of separate entity taking a different approach to robotics than the rest of Google.
