New robots, new capabilities. Tracking what's coming for the workforce.
Robotics Boston Dynamics opened a permanent Atlas training center at Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant on September 21. The first task is arranging car parts in assembly order. Next year the site grows roughly tenfold, and data collection moves out to aerospace, semiconductor and logistics customers.
Robotics SoftBank sold its last stake in Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, then opened talks to buy a maker of autonomous excavators — the crowd-pleasing robot cashed out, the money moved to a machine nobody will livestream.
Robotics Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid performed goal celebrations and handed over the match ball at a World Cup Round of 16 game — a marketing spectacle for a robot Hyundai plans to build 30,000 a year.
Robotics Hyundai has completed its buyout of SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, taking full ownership as SoftBank redeploys capital toward its OpenAI bet.
Robotics Boston Dynamics has committed its entire 2026 Atlas run to parent Hyundai and Google DeepMind, with no units for outside buyers until 2027 — as a Korean union moves to block them.
Robotics Hyundai uploaded a 'School of Football' video on May 25 showing Boston Dynamics' Atlas studying World Cup footage and kicking a ball. It is the second Atlas spot under the April 'Next Starts Now' campaign with Son Heung-min — and the same Atlas the Korean Metal Workers' Union has refused to allow into any Hyundai plant without an agreement.
Robotics Six days after the JPMorgan unit-count number, Hyundai built the org chart underneath it. A new Software-Defined Factory division, an ex-McKinsey VP named Alpesh Patel, a separate Robotics Parts Procurement Office, and Georgia chosen over Boston Dynamics' Massachusetts home.
Robotics Boston Dynamics' May 18 tech blog explained the training method behind Atlas lifting 110+ pounds: GPU-parallel RL, proprioception, zero-shot transfer from 50–70 lb simulation to physical loads it never trained on. May 22 follow-on: no OSHA rule applies, ISO 25785-1 won't publish before 2026 or 2027. The 25,000-unit Hyundai order arrives inside that gap.
Robotics DHL's global CIO breaks the robotics-deployment script the industry has been using for two years and tells Fortune what the executive memo always omits: yes, fewer jobs, and the people left actually like it.
Robotics At a JPMorgan IR session on May 19, Hyundai put a number on its humanoid program: 25,000 Atlas robots across Hyundai/Kia plants, 30K-unit annual production capacity by 2028, 300K US-made actuators per year. The Korean union has already demanded a labor agreement.
Robotics On May 6, Boston Dynamics posted a YouTube short of the production-spec Atlas hitting a clean handstand and an L-sit — the first time the mass-produced version has been seen moving. The Savannah Metaplant deployment is still scheduled for 2028.
Robotics On May 6, Boston Dynamics uploaded video of Atlas serial 001 — the production-build, not the research mule — doing a handstand into a 5-second L-sit. Hyundai owns the bot, deploys it 2028. The serial number is the bigger signal than the gymnastics.