Alphabet finds buyer for its robotic animals unit
GOOGLE’S parent company, Alphabet, has sold Boston Dynamics, a company that makes robotic animals and human-like bipeds, to the Japanese tech giant Softbank.
Boston Dynamics’s robots, which include the dog-like Spot, the 6ft humanoid Atlas and the sprinting Cheetah, have become sensations on Youtube but have failed to become marketable products and Alphabet put the business up for sale last year.
Softbank confirmed the deal along with the news that it is buying Schaft, a Japanese group that makes bipedal robots, bought by Google in 2013. The size of yesterday’s deal was not disclosed but is believed to be over $100m (£79m).
The company, which last year bought British microchip company ARM Holdings and has recently set up a $93bn technology fund in London, is known for its outlandish bets on longterm ideas.
The Google robotics unit behind Boston Dynamics was once led by Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android mobile operating system, who left last year to start his own smartphone firm.
After Google was restructured as the Alphabet conglomerate in 2015, its individual companies were put under more pressure to prove they could survive independently, and its robotics work focused on driverless cars and artificial intelligence.
Boston Dynamics, originally spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, produced impressive prototype machines. Its videos showed its robots carrying heavy loads, completing household chores and lifting boxes in factories. One robot, Bigdog, was designed with the US military and meant to help carry supplies into battle, but the project was cancelled after the robot was deemed too loud.
However, Handle, a wheeled assistant was described as “nightmare inducing” by Boston Dynamics’s chief executive Marc Reibert.