Let’s go robot that steps out of the trunk and pumps my gas for me!
Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
111–120 of 146 posts
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#112Hyundai's interests are broad enough that I really wonder what they intend to do with it. Are they just going to do factory helper robots that are super-specialized and we'll never see? Or will they actually commercially sell some version of these types of robots?
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#113And a fricking messenger app sold for $21.8 billion. Unbelievable.
When you look at how scared Facebook was of WhatsApp and combined that with FB market cap... $22 billion makes so much sense.
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people are missing the point of this comment. The US invested heavily in BD, and now BD is being incorporated into a South Korean company rather than a US company. I presume this is mostly because US manufacturing industry is relatively dead so capex for potential automation gains don't make sense for US firms.
> US manufacturing industry is relatively dead Here's where we need to be spending our tax money. We should be buying overseas firms and onshoring manufacture.
The legal landscape in the U.S. may be harder to navigate, labor laws more strict, and salaries necessarily higher. This all makes it hard for U.S. manufacturing to compete on production of commodities.
Like many of the EU industries, viable U.S. industries tends to produce and export unique things with relatively small physical volume: complex chips, complex chemical compounds (like medicines), precision mechanics, high-performance agricultural equipment, aircraft, spacecraft, etc. Of course the U.S. does produce higher-volume things, too, from cars to foods to fuels, but these are more for domestic consumption, and often face competition from imported goods even domestically.
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#115These are one of the few times I can say that I don't care if Boston Dynamics are making money as yet. Boston Dynamics are one of the few real serious players in the robotics space worldwide doing deep R&D. Hyundai are basically paying for the BD Labs research. And they are well positioned to reap the products and techniques from the lab with their own manufacturing and engineering prowess and experience over the nex…
The key competence of BD is locomotion on legs. There are plenty of other companies that make stationary industrial robots, and a few who make wheeled robots. But there are still a number of areas where wheeled robots are at a disadvantage: inspection of complex industrial installations (like complex pipework and other hard-to-reach areas), firefighting and rescue operations, well, even delivery in places with steps…
There are plenty of patents along the way to get to locomotion on legs that have uses that don't necessarily need to be applied in that manner. Hyundai gets all of those too.
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#116I think it's quite the loss for the US to allow a foreign company to gain controlling interest in such a cutting edge firm. Some of what they've built I'd have to imagine could be of very real national interest as it relates to any of the military applications.
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great for Hyundai. Not such a good ROI for the taxpayers who kept BD afloat with decades of DARPA funding.
I think people are missing the point of this comment. The US invested heavily in BD, and now BD is being incorporated into a South Korean company rather than a US company. I presume this is mostly because US manufacturing industry is relatively dead so capex for potential automation gains don't make sense for US firms.
The perception that US manufacturing is dead is mostly just perception, if you look at the actual numbers.
Before the big dip caused by covid, the value of US manufacturing output had never been higher. [1]
Even in inflation adjusted/real value terms, US manufacturing output is 50% higher today than it was 30 years ago.
My guess is that the perception is cause by a few factors:
- fewer people are employed in manufacturing than were in the past because of improved manufacturing technology/productivity
- other sectors of the US economy have grown at a faster rate than manufacturing (tech for example) which means manufacturing represents a smaller share of a bigger pie
- the US is no longer number 1 in the world as China surpassed the US about 10 years ago. But the US still manufactures more than Germany, Japan and South Korea combined, for example.
[1] https://www.nam.org/state-manufacturing-data/2020-united-sta...
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#118Boston Dynamics is the one company on this planet that inspires me and makes me believe in a wonderful future that we have yet to even glimpse. I hope they keep doing what they're doing and elevate our species to new heights. God bless them.
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sell a man a fish, he'll come back hungry tomorrow. Teach him how to fish, you just lost a customer. edit: Karl Marx came up with it first it seems haha. I swear I didn't know!
I prefer the darker version. Give a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.
Tenet would beg to differ.
Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M
#120And a fricking messenger app sold for $21.8 billion. Unbelievable.
To be fair, nobody was under any illusion that this valuation had anything to do with the technology WhatsApp developed. Any half competent team could recreate WhatsApp. The price was for 1 billion active users. That's a little harder to get.