Boston Dynamics Hires Rohit Prasad as CEO While Atlas Is Still Listed as 'In Development'

Boston Dynamics named Rohit Prasad chief executive on Oct. 6, effective Oct. 7, and the company's own announcement still lists Atlas as an "electric humanoid in development", while its parent Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy 30,000 Atlas robots a year from 2028.

Prasad spent 12 years at Amazon as senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa and AGI, and nearly 14 years before that at Raytheon BBN Technologies, according to Boston Dynamics' announcement. The Robot Report calls him the company's third CEO, after founder Marc Raibert and Robert Playter, who stepped down in February 2026. Amanda McMaster, the chief financial officer, served as interim chief executive in between.

What the announcement says, and what it leaves out

Prasad is quoted in the release: "By bringing together advanced AI and robotics, we can build intelligent systems that create meaningful value in real-world environments." Jaehoon Chang, vice chair of Hyundai Motor Group and board chair at Boston Dynamics, said "Rohit's proven ability to turn AI into products at global scale gives us a powerful foundation to build and scale Physical AI."

The release carries no unit counts, no price for any robot and no timeline for Atlas. It names three platforms: Spot, a quadruped for industrial inspection; Stretch, which moves boxes in logistics and retail; and Atlas. The Robot Report adds that Spot version 5.2 enables agentic workflows, that the Orbit AIVI inspection product is powered by Google Gemini, and that Stretch is unloading trailers. Atlas has a new four-fingered hand and a Robotics Metaplant Application Center in Georgia.

Prasad's last Amazon role also matters to the reading. Fortune reported on Dec. 17, 2025 that Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy announced his departure from the AGI team he had led since 2023, with Peter DeSantis taking a new combined organisation for models, custom silicon and quantum. Prasad's reference point is therefore model development, not manufacturing.

The number that matters is joints per robot

Hyundai's public ambition is larger than any figure in the Boston Dynamics release. Automation World reports that Hyundai plans to deploy 30,000 Atlas robots annually starting in 2028, including at its EV Metaplant near Savannah, Georgia. eWeek reports the same 30,000 annual production goal, a plan for more than 25,000 Atlas-based robots across Hyundai's manufacturing operations, Kia's Georgia plant following in 2029, and a target of more than 300,000 actuator units a year from US facilities.

Those two figures do not sit together easily. Our earlier report on Atlas's redesigned hand found 13 joints per hand, each driven by a direct actuator. Two hands is 26 joints, and 30,000 robots a year is 780,000 hand joints before counting an arm, a leg or a neck. Against that, 300,000 actuators a year covers about 10 per robot.

1. Hyundai planned actuator output (eWeek)300K actuators or joints per year
2. Hand joints only, 30,000 robots (our arithmetic)780K actuators or joints per year

Source: eWeek (300,000 actuators; 30,000 robots a year); 780,000 is our arithmetic from 13 joints per hand, two hands, accessed 2026-10-06

There are innocent explanations. The 300,000 may refer to one actuator family, or to one plant, and eWeek's report of it is secondhand. The 30,000 is a capacity and deployment goal, not shipments. But the mismatch shows why the missing denominator matters: neither Hyundai's figures as reported nor Boston Dynamics' release say how many Atlas robots work for a customer today, and the sources we read give no price or payload.

Item	Figure	Source
Atlas deployments per year, from 2028	30,000	Automation World, eWeek
Cumulative Atlas-based robots planned	more than 25,000	eWeek
Kia Georgia plant	2029	eWeek
Actuators produced per year in the US	more than 300,000	eWeek
Atlas status in the Boston Dynamics release	"in development"	Boston Dynamics

The photograph above is labelled on Commons as an Atlas robot at Hyundai Motorstudio Goyang, a display, not a factory deployment.

What would change this read

There is also the question of who builds the thing. Prasad's record in the sources is language models and a voice assistant that reached hundreds of millions of households. They say nothing about his experience with actuator supply or factory ramps, and Hyundai's 30,000-a-year plan will depend on both.

Our earlier report found that Boston Dynamics had not confirmed whether the hand demonstrations were autonomous or teleoperated, and gave no grip force or payload. A published Atlas spec sheet with a unit price, a payload in kilograms and a count of robots running shifts at the Georgia site would settle most of it. Disclosure is thin elsewhere in factory robotics too: Teradyne's stake in Bright Machines was announced with no size given. Prasad starts Oct. 7; the first number to look for is any headcount of Atlas units outside a demonstration.