Boston Dynamics tempers 2027 IPO hopes over Atlas rollout
A Boston Dynamics IPO is unlikely in 2027 because the company has not deployed its Atlas humanoid at scale and remains unprofitable, a senior Hyundai Motor Group executive told Reuters.
Asked whether a listing could happen next year, the unnamed executive said, “It won’t be easy.” The executive added that Hyundai needed to assess conditions but offered no further detail. Hyundai has not publicly set a timetable or valuation target for a potential listing.
Atlas deployment remains the central test
Hyundai plans to build a factory with capacity to produce 30,000 robots annually by 2028. It also intends to begin deploying humanoids at its manufacturing plant in Georgia that year, followed by other facilities across its network. Some analysts consider those goals ambitious.
Boston Dynamics unveiled an updated Atlas at CES in January, but the industrial case still depends on whether the humanoid can perform useful factory work reliably and repeatedly. Kim Hyun-su, a senior fund manager at IBK Asset Management, told Reuters that replacing assembly line workers could take considerably longer than demonstrations suggest.
“It’s not difficult to make robots dancing, but it’s challenging to make them carry heavy loads and get involved in manufacturing at plants.”Kim Hyun-su, senior fund manager at IBK Asset Management
The financial gap is also substantial. Boston Dynamics recorded a loss of 528.4 billion won in 2025, according to a Hyundai Glovis filing cited by Reuters. Its accumulated losses from 2021 through 2025 reached nearly 1.7 trillion won.
Valuation forecasts run far ahead of current operations
Estimates of Boston Dynamics’ potential valuation vary widely. Samsung Securities said market estimates range from 50 trillion won to 100 trillion won. IBK Securities projected a possible valuation of 141 trillion won by 2030, when it expects the company to produce about 11 trillion won in revenue.
Those figures are analyst forecasts rather than a valuation endorsed by Hyundai. Meritz Securities analyst Kim Joon-sung expects an IPO in 2029 or 2030, arguing that Hyundai first needs extensive operational data and better robot capabilities before Boston Dynamics can sell broadly to outside customers.
Hyundai acquired control of Boston Dynamics in 2021 and announced plans in July to buy SoftBank’s remaining stake of roughly 10%. The group is effectively using its own factories as the first proving ground for Atlas. The planned Georgia deployment in 2028 will therefore be a more concrete measure of progress than the current range of IPO valuations.
Sources: Reuters, BigGo Finance
