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Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

therobotreport.com

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Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#181

Post by gorgoiler »

llboston wrote: post #37

I have been secretly hoping Tesla to buy Boston Dynamics and revolutionize autonomous manufacturing. One day, a Starship fleet will send an army of robots to Mars and build out a city.

What is the moral case for implementing autonomous manufacturing?

If you eliminate one kind of job, then another, then another, and then implement general purpose job elimination, where does it end?

Is it not an axiom of the world that there simply isn’t enough knowledge work to go around all seven billion of us?

By taking away jobs what do those of us who aren’t programmers, architects, novelists or day spa wait staff have left to do?

(Thank you for your comment, it really made me think.)

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#182

Post by birdsbirdsbirds »

valuearb wrote: post #172

Cutting edge high tech company goes to die under ownership of massive conglomerate. It’s an old but consistent story.

Isn't Hyundai cutting edge on its own? I had the impression that Hyundai is quite innovative. This could be a good match where BD profits massively from Hyundai's resources.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#183

Post by ActorNightly »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #121
cjmaria wrote: post #97

Seems like this fits in well with Hyundai's autonomous car project Motional, which is also based in Boston. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21362322/hyundai-aptiv-mo...

Seems like this deal has more to do with automated manufacturing than it does with autonomous driving.

BD isn't really about precision robotics though, they are definitely more of environment estimation and motion planning company first, and legged robot company second.

My guess is they got acquired for some research they have done in dynamic trajectory planning, which can be useful in self driving cars.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#184

Post by unishark »

jitix wrote: post #170
ajit_singh wrote: post #167

$1 billion! I understand that the valuation of a company is also determined by its earning potential but did Boston Dynamics have that so much that it justified this crazy valuation. From what I know it barely made any revenue while being in business for more than 25 years. It couldn't find a customer to produce any of its hyped robots at scale. It was clearly a loss-magnet entity for Softbank which is in a selling m…

As an immigrant engineer I feel this is actually good because it shows that the market in the US is bullish on new technologies. I believe this is what has led to most of the major inventions in the past 100 years to come from the US. In my home country (India) it’d be impossible for a company to reach such valuations based only on research and prototypes, which in turn leads to low salaries for STEM people, culminat…

We already knew it was a bull market for technology.

When absurd deals are happening it could mean the bubble is about to burst though.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#185

Post by ActorNightly »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #80
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing what you want works until the money runs out.

If your potential grows faster then the money runs out, you can play this game indefinitely. Source: River in Brazil

Amazon AWS is the literal incarnation of "money printer go BRRRR" meme. The profit margins are insane on it. They have zero issues with money reserves to expand to new things.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#187

Post by ActorNightly »

317070 wrote: post #62
karmasimida wrote: post #57

Boston Dynamics is such a hyped company, yet it constantly gets shoveled from one mega corp to another...Does it mean none of those companies see a profitable future with it?

Word has it Marc Raibert is not the easiest person to work with as an acquiring company, in a sense that he will keep control of the company, and do whatever he wants with it. Good for him, I think.

I dunno if he has any say anymore given that the company belongs to Softbank who will write the terms of the sale.

And generally, it got passed around because there is valuable research IP that belongs to the company, which given the right market can be valuable, so in the spirit of capitalizing on it if that market realizes, companies either jump on it, or preemptively buy it for a later sale (which is no doubt what Softbank did)

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#189

Post by gwicks56 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #181
llboston wrote: post #37

I have been secretly hoping Tesla to buy Boston Dynamics and revolutionize autonomous manufacturing. One day, a Starship fleet will send an army of robots to Mars and build out a city.

What is the moral case for implementing autonomous manufacturing? If you eliminate one kind of job, then another, then another, and then implement general purpose job elimination, where does it end? Is it not an axiom of the world that there simply isn’t enough knowledge work to go around all seven billion of us? By taking away jobs what do those of us who aren’t programmers, architects, novelists or day spa wait sta…

Surely the whole point of tech is to make life involve less work? The problem becomes an economic one, how to you distribute the wealth automation enables.

Re: Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics

#190

Post by ajit_singh »

unishark wrote: post #184
jitix wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an immigrant engineer I feel this is actually good because it shows that the market in the US is bullish on new technologies. I believe this is what has led to most of the major inventions in the past 100 years to come from the US. In my home country (India) it’d be impossible for a company to reach such valuations based only on research and prototypes, which in turn leads to low salaries for STEM people, culminat…

We already knew it was a bull market for technology. When absurd deals are happening it could mean the bubble is about to burst though.

This immediately follows the Slack acquisition which was sold at at price that is almost 1/10th of Pakistan's GDP. Keep in mind that Pakistan has 220 million people.

One individual company with less than 2k employees is valued 1/10th of what 220 million people collectively produce in a year. How can one explain this asymmetry. No doubt it was the biggest tech acquisition in the history but tech executives in the US bolstered by Fed's dollar printing have been breaking paper records almost every year.

Maybe I do not understand the economics of this well so I would gladly accept any roast of my above observation.

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