SoftBank has reportedly agreed to buy the research lab that taught Boston Dynamics' Atlas to do backflips

SoftBank has agreed to acquire the Robotics and AI Institute (RAI), according to trade-press reporting from The Robot Report and Dealroom, both describing the deal as confirmed by the two parties this month. Neither company has actually issued its own press release or public statement saying so. When The Robot Report contacted RAI directly, the institute would only say: "We don't have anything to share on this topic right now. We'd still love to stay in touch and keep you in the loop when we have news to share." That's a non-denial, not a confirmation -- and this piece is explicit about the difference rather than treating trade-press sourcing as settled fact.

RAI is a Cambridge, Massachusetts research lab founded in 2022 by Marc Raibert, who also founded Boston Dynamics, with more than $400 million committed by Hyundai and Boston Dynamics to work on robot control, perception, manipulation and navigation. Its whole-body learning framework is the software behind Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid performing acrobatics. Financial terms of the reported SoftBank deal are undisclosed, and it's now under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which vets foreign acquisitions of US assets for national-security risk -- clearance, per the reporting, is not guaranteed.

The reported move follows SoftBank's own exit from Boston Dynamics itself: in July, SoftBank sold its remaining 9.65% stake in the humanoid maker to Hyundai for $325 million, leaving Hyundai in full control of the commercial robot business. If the RAI acquisition closes, it would put SoftBank on the research side of the same lineage it just sold out of on the commercial side -- separating Raibert's long-horizon lab work from the increasingly product-focused Atlas program Hyundai now owns outright.