Japanese giant Softbank has bought robotics firm Boston Dynamics from Google’s parent company Alphabet.
The company, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, is the brains behind the Atlas and BigDog robots.
It has previously stated: “Our mission is to build the most advanced robots on Earth, with remarkable mobility, agility, dexterity and speed.”
Softbank also bought Schaft from Google, which had acquired the firms around four years ago when investing heavily in robotics. The terms of the deals were not disclosed.
Boston Dynamics was put up for sale a year ago and is yet to make any inroads into commercial markets with its innovations.
Telecoms company Softbank has been transformed into a tech giant with some huge acquisitions headlined by the purchase of microchip designer ARM Holdings for £24bn last year.