SoftBank Agrees to Acquire the Robotics and AI Institute
Hardware / analysis
SoftBank Agrees to Acquire the Robotics and AI Institute
The undisclosed deal is SoftBank's second robotics purchase since its $5.375 billion ABB Robotics buy, and it comes months after Hyundai paid to own the rest of Boston Dynamics outright.
SoftBank Group agreed Sept. 18 to acquire the Robotics and AI Institute, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, robotics lab founded by roboticist Marc Raibert, from Hyundai Motor Group, the companies confirmed to The Robot Report. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal still needs clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the federal panel that screens foreign purchases of American companies for national-security risk.
The Robot Report first reported the agreement. RAI told the outlet it had "nothing to share on this topic right now" beyond confirming talks were underway; SoftBank did not respond to the outlet's questions. Neither company has said what RAI, which trades as a research institute rather than a product company, would be worth or how it fits into SoftBank's existing robotics holdings.
Two companies, one founder, three transactions
Marc Raibert founded Boston Dynamics in 1992 and built it into the source of the internet's viral robot-parkour videos before stepping down as chief executive in January 2020. SoftBank owned Boston Dynamics from 2017 to 2021, when it sold roughly 80% of the company to Hyundai for about $921 million, with Hyundai Executive Chair Chung Euisun personally taking a 20% stake in the same deal. Raibert stayed on as chairman and, in 2022, spun up RAI as a separate research arm with more than $400 million in initial funding from Hyundai, according to The Robot Report. RAI's research spans robot control, perception, manipulation and navigation, and it built the whole-body learning framework that lets Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid perform its acrobatic moves.
The trade running in the other direction
While SoftBank was negotiating to buy Raibert's research lab, Hyundai was separately buying SoftBank out of the robot maker itself. Hyundai agreed June 21 to pay $325 million for SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics, taking Hyundai to full ownership, according to Korean outlet KED Global. KED Global reported the move as a step toward a Boston Dynamics initial public offering, one Hyundai watchers there have tied to funding Chung's personal inheritance-tax bill and a broader restructuring of the group's governance. The two deals point opposite directions within the same year: SoftBank is buying its way back into robotics research while Hyundai buys SoftBank out of the robot maker whose products that research feeds.
SoftBank's second robotics purchase in a year
RAI is not SoftBank's only recent robotics bet. The company agreed Oct. 8, 2025, to buy ABB's robotics division for $5.375 billion, a unit with about 7,000 employees, $2.279 billion in 2024 revenue and $277 million in operating EBITA, according to SoftBank's own announcement. That deal is still working through regulatory approval in the European Union, China and the United States, with closing expected in mid-to-late 2026. SoftBank Chairman and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son framed the purchase as a platform play: "SoftBank's next frontier is Physical AI. Together with ABB Robotics, we will unite world-class technology and talent under our shared vision to fuse Artificial Super Intelligence and robotics," he said in the release, which also named SoftBank Robotics Group, Berkshire Grey, AutoStore Holdings, Agile Robots and Skild AI as existing pieces of that portfolio.
| SoftBank robotics move | Price | Announced | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABB Robotics division | $5.375 billion | Oct. 8, 2025 | Closing expected mid-to-late 2026 |
| Robotics and AI Institute | Undisclosed | Sept. 18, 2026 | Under CFIUS review |
| Boston Dynamics stake (sold to Hyundai) | $325 million | June 21, 2026 | Announced |
RAI would be SoftBank's third named robotics transaction since October 2025 and the only one with no public price tag, which makes it the hardest of the three to weigh against the $4.87 billion that flowed into robotics funding in August alone, half of it into Chinese companies. Unlike ABB's robotics arm, which sells industrial arms with a real revenue line, RAI has not shipped a commercial product; its value to SoftBank is research talent and a body of published control and manipulation work, not a customer base.
What RAI's research is actually worth to a buyer
A research institute is a different kind of acquisition than a supplier of industrial arms. ABB Robotics comes with $2.279 billion in trailing revenue and a 7,000-person organization already selling hardware to factories; RAI comes with a smaller headcount, no disclosed revenue, and a research agenda built around getting robots to handle tasks nobody has commercialized yet, the kind of work Maven Robotics is still proving out with just eight deployed units at a single customer. SoftBank's bet, if the acquisition closes, is that owning the lab that produced Atlas's control software is worth more than what RAI earns today, which by its own account is close to nothing.
What is still unknown
SoftBank has not said what it paid, whether Raibert will have a role at the company once the deal closes, or how RAI's roughly four-year-old research program will sit alongside the ABB Robotics unit once that acquisition closes. CFIUS reviews have no fixed public timeline, and the committee does not typically comment on cases in progress. The number to watch is not RAI's price, which may never become public; it is whether SoftBank folds RAI's research directly into the ABB Robotics integration or keeps it running as an independent lab, a decision that would say more about what SoftBank thinks Physical AI actually requires than the acquisition price ever could.
Sources
- SoftBank agrees to acquire Robotics and AI Institute — The Robot Report
- Hyundai to take full ownership of Boston Dynamics in SoftBank buyout — KED Global
- Acquisition of ABB Ltd's Robotics Business — SoftBank Group Corp.
Sources
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