In recent months, a slew of top executives at Boston Dynamics have left the company, which Hyundai bought a majority stake in back in 2021. It’s notable timing: The robotics company is working toward an IPO and talking about opening up new production facilities.
CEO Robert Playter retired in February, followed by the company’s chief operating and chief strategy officers. CTO Aaron Saunders defected to Google DeepMind, and other robotics researchers and senior engineers have left, too.
Former employees told Semafor the executives were pushed out by a board of directors critical of the company’s narrowing lead against its competitors. They said the company is under pressure to speed the delivery of working humanoids to Hyundai, which said it wants to integrate “tens of thousands” of them into its own carmaking plants in the next few years.
As of this year, the company was making roughly four of its Atlas humanoid robots per month, as it prepares to open a new manufacturing facility in the coming months, former employees said.
“These changes are designed to help us prepare for the next chapter of Boston Dynamics, where we will need a structure that supports our ability to mass manufacture robots and rapidly drive scale in this emerging industry,” a Boston Dynamics spokesperson said. “We’re currently switching from the prototype to the production version of Atlas, and we are quickly scaling up our capacity.”