Boston Dynamics asks Korean suppliers to prepare parts for 10,000 Atlas humanoids

Boston Dynamics has asked its Korean suppliers to prepare parts for 10,000 Atlas humanoid robots by the end of next year, Korea Economic Daily reported on Oct. 27. The Hyundai-owned company told the chosen suppliers individually on Oct. 26, according to the paper, and a formal purchase order is expected soon. The parts are meant to move Atlas from Hyundai Motor Group's robot training center in Georgia into its factories.

The supplier list reads like a Hyundai car program. Hyundai Mobis, the group's parts maker, builds the joint actuators and the hand grippers. Samsung SDI and LG Energy Solution supply batteries, and apart from NVIDIA's chipset nearly every major part comes from a Korean company, the paper reports. What that buys is volume and a China-free parts list. What it does not buy yet is a low price: Korea Economic Daily puts Atlas at about $130,000 a unit, five to six times the $20,000 to $30,000 cited for Tesla's Optimus and the $29,900 of Unitree's H2.

Mobis holds the part that sets the cost

Korea Economic Daily estimates actuators at about 70% of Atlas's parts cost. When Mobis announced the supply deal at CES in January, it put actuators at about 60% of a humanoid's material cost. Boston Dynamics handed its draft design only to Mobis, the paper reports. The rest of the list, as reported:

Part	Supplier
Joint actuators, hand grippers	Hyundai Mobis
Headlamp and main camera	Hyundai Mobis with Namuga and IL
Batteries	Samsung SDI, LG Energy Solution
Hand cameras	MCNEX
Battery charging	BH EVS
Control arms	CTR, a Hyundai and Kia chassis supplier founded in 1971
Chipset	NVIDIA

The paper frames the choice as cost control, protection of design know-how, and a way out of a market where Chinese makers accounted for 86.6% of the roughly 22,000 humanoids shipped worldwide in the first half of the year. "In the end, humanoids are a fight over how cheaply and uniformly you can build a lot of them, just like cars," an industry official told the paper.

The first buyer is Hyundai

The first customer explains why price can wait. Boston Dynamics plans to build 30,000 robots from 2028, and the first ones go to Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA) in Georgia to sort parts, according to the paper. Hyundai is buying robots from a company it owns, and they are built by its own parts affiliate and by suppliers such as CTR that already serve its car plants. The 10,000-unit request is a third of that 30,000 figure, and the purchase order that turns it into a commitment is the next number to watch.