Two cheques a day apart, almost the same amount, two opposite directions. On 15 July, Walden Robotics emerged from silence with $300 million for a valuation of $1.1 billion. On the 16th, Hyundai signed for $325 million to buy from SoftBank the 9.65% it was missing of Boston Dynamics. One enters, the other exits. What separates the two deals fits in one line of Walden’s press release: since February, its robots have been working in production in a Toyota factory.
What SoftBank is selling is not what we think
SoftBank’s exit is not a move of mood, nor is it a bet that is going wrong. It is a clause. The 2021 agreement contained a put option authorising SoftBank to sell its stake at a pre-fixed price if Boston Dynamics was still not listed this year. It is not; the option is exercised. Hyundai had taken 80% in 2021 in a deal valuing the whole at around $1.1 billion, before successive capital increases diluted SoftBank to around 10%. Five years later, the company is worth approximately $3.3 billion and Hyundai holds the entirety, Atlas programme included. Tripling in five years is not a failure. But it is the trajectory of a laboratory asset, not that of a supplier.
What Toyota is buying is access to the workshop
Walden has eighteen months of existence and six months of public life. Russ Tedrake, professor at MIT, spent ten years at the Toyota Research Institute as senior vice-president of large behavior models before spinning out the company from the laboratory in January. The round is co-led by Toyota and Deviation Capital, with NVIDIA, Boeing, Samsung Ventures, Prologis Ventures and CoreWeave Ventures in the wagon. What this money buys is not a demonstration: since February, Walden’s robots have been performing useful work in production in a Toyota factory in North America, alongside human operators. The company claims less than two months between the first pilot and actual production. Toyota is not just financing a supplier, it is opening its line to it — and it is this opening, far more than the chequebook, that is rare.
The word Walden never writes
A detail that is not one: Walden’s official press release does not contain the word "humanoid" even once. It speaks of general-purpose robots, of versatile robots. The word arrived in press reprints, not in the company’s mouth. This is not a PR modesty, it is an indication of what is being sold: not a two-legged silhouette, but the ability to be assigned to a post.
The metric of the week is therefore neither an amount nor a valuation, it is a ratio. Five months of actual production at a manufacturer weigh $1.1 billion. Fifteen years of fundamental research, several generations of Atlas and the most beautiful catalogue of videos in the discipline weigh $3.3. Relative to the time elapsed, the second asset has become the cheapest of the two. Three weeks ago, we wrote here that the Stock Exchange was crowning humanoids before they had proven they could stand. This week, the order has reversed: money arrives after the proof, and the proof is called a workstation.