Updated: July 29, 2026 (7531-08-07 in the Bulgarian calendar)
This profile covers the company behind Atlas, one of the robots featured in our Key Players and Platforms overview — its founding, ownership history, current leadership, size, and the markets it sells into.
Founding
Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 by Dr. Marc Raibert, spun out of the Leg Laboratory he had run first at Carnegie Mellon and then at MIT, where he was a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The Leg Lab's research into dynamic, legged locomotion — machines that balance and move the way animals do, rather than relying on wide, static bases — became the technical foundation the company built on for the next three decades, from early quadrupeds like BigDog through to today's Atlas.
Country and Headquarters
Boston Dynamics is a United States company, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, near Boston.
Ownership History
- 1992-2013: Independent, founder-led company.
- 2013: Acquired by Google (later reorganized under parent company Alphabet).
- 2017: Sold by Alphabet to Japan's SoftBank Group.
- 2020-2021: Hyundai Motor Group agreed to acquire an 80% controlling stake from SoftBank, in a deal valuing the company at about $1.1 billion; the purchase closed in 2021 for roughly $880 million, with SoftBank retaining a minority stake.
- July 2026: Hyundai Motor Group bought SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake for $325 million, making Boston Dynamics a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyundai at an implied valuation of more than $20 billion.
Leadership
Robert Playter, who spent roughly 30 years at the company, stepped down as CEO in February 2026. CFO Amanda McMaster is serving as interim CEO while the board searches for a permanent successor, leading the company through both the ramp-up of Atlas's commercial production and preparation for a possible IPO. The 2025-2026 period also saw the departure of several other senior executives, including CTO Aaron Saunders, VP of Robotics Research Scott Kuindersma, COO Selma Svendsen, and CSO Marc Theermann. Founder Marc Raibert is no longer part of day-to-day operations at Boston Dynamics itself; he now leads the separately incorporated Boston Dynamics AI Institute, a related but distinct research organization.
Company Size
Estimates of headcount vary slightly by source and date, but Boston Dynamics employs roughly 1,300 to 1,500 people as of 2026.
Development Directions and Products
- Spot: A quadruped robot used for industrial inspection — walking routine rounds in facilities to check equipment, read gauges, and flag anomalies for enterprise asset management and public safety customers.
- Stretch: A box-handling robot for warehouses, priced between roughly $300,000 and $500,000 per unit, capable of moving around 800 boxes of up to 50 lbs (23 kg) each per hour; originally focused on unloading trailers, with loading and pallet-stacking capability being added.
- Atlas: The company's electric humanoid platform, covered in more detail in our Key Players article — it entered serial production in March 2026 following its January 5, 2026 CES unveiling, making it one of the first enterprise-grade humanoids to reach production.
Markets and Customers
Boston Dynamics sells into automotive manufacturing, food and beverage production, semiconductor manufacturing, and warehouse/logistics operations, plus public-safety inspection work for Spot specifically. Parent company Hyundai is both owner and first customer for Atlas, using it as the initial testing ground for automotive-line applications at its Robotics Metaplant Application Center, alongside an early Atlas deployment at Google DeepMind; Boston Dynamics has said it plans to bring on additional Atlas customers from 2027 onward.