Hyundai Motors is buying Boston Dynamics, in accordance to The Korea Financial Each day. The publication says Softbank has agreed to provide the robot maker for 1 trillion won (US$917 million) and that the acquisition will be finalized at a board conference right now, December 10th. The firms have been talking about a sale because at the very least early November, centered on a former report by Bloomberg.

Boston Dynamics is regarded for its nightmare-inducing (or oddly adorable, depending on your standpoint) robotic pet Location, which it started out marketing in mid-2020 for $75,000. The four-legged robot can climb stairs, herd sheep and pull a rickshaw. Before this 12 months, the machine also helped healthcare vendors remotely triage people suspected to have COVID-19 at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Clinic. The corporation is also at the rear of the humanoid robot Atlas that is agile more than enough to do handstands and parkour.

Boston Dynamics is a Massachusetts Institute of Technologies spinoff very first obtained by Google in 2013. In 2017, Google’s father or mother firm Alphabet offered it to Softbank, which experienced a “vision of catalyzing the upcoming wave of clever robotics.” Hyundai Motor has been investing seriously in robotics over the previous pair of years and vowed to devote up to 1.5 trillion won (US$1.4 billion) in the business by 2025. It has generally targeted on production wheeled robots for factory use, even though, as a substitute developing equipment as intriguing as Location and Atlas. KED says Hyundai Motor will shoulder about 400 billion received, although its affiliates, including car pieces maker Hyundai Mobis Co. will fork out the rest of the acquisition value.

This story by Mariella Moon initially appeared on Engadget.