Quote:
Originally Posted by PCH
Amazing, thanks Gary.
Sadly BD has now gone overseas to Hyundai in South Korea.
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Happy New Year Paul,
As you are aware in the world of corporate buy-outs, anything can happen.
And sometimes despite all good intentions, not even company insiders
really know, especially when it comes to the world of bean counters
and Pointy-haired Bosses that sometimes forget what the company
actually paid for was engineering expertise and not a bunch of bricks
and mortar and blueprints and they end up cooking the golden goose
by trying to physically move the business they just bought.
However, this 17 Dec 2020 interview with a vice president of business
development at Boston Dynamics conducted by a journalist at the IEEE
provides some insight as to what Boston Dynamics are hoping for
and there is certainly no talk of dismantling the US R&D team.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...ndai-interview
Hyundai bought their 80% share from SoftBank, which itself is a
Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in
Tokyo that has a US $100 billion technology-based venture capital fund,
the largest in the world. SoftBank is a company few outside the technology
industry have ever heard of, but it is the 36th largest public company in
the world and second largest publicly listed company in Japan after Toyota.
In what was bigger news in the electronics industry this year,
in September, SoftBank sold ARM Holdings for US $40 billion.
Given that SoftBank had originally bought ARM for $31 billion in only 2016,
it certainly is a quick way to make US $9 billion in the space of four
years. I guess the bean counters and Pointy-haired Bosses at SouthBank
did know what they were doing.