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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

That feels so low of a price when compared to the insane valuation people attribute to Tesla robots

The problem is Boston Dynamics makes actual robots, which are much more limited than robots constructed from pure hype.

> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money!

Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they just didn’t quite find PMF; they aren’t good enough for factory work, Spot is niche, and Atlas is too scary for in-home.

The robot butler business model just hasn’t been tested in the same way AFAIK.

you don't make it into the tres commas club by showing revenue

now imagine atlas with depleted uranium armor plates, 120 5.56 rounds (99.7% accuracy), and whatever specific equipment for an individual operator role

spot as a ground recon unit that works with

drones in the air that create 3d plan of attack

instead of sending elite human and dog operators in first, a squad of 4 atlas, 2 spots, and 4 drones is deployed

the human teams move in second, close behind

also do people really want humanoid robots at home?

that’s a lot of space

Boston dynamics already tried selling to the military but it never really panned out as a big market because their robots were very loud. Which is why they focused on enterprise niches

> also do people really want humanoid robots at home?

Yes, they will be everywhere IMO

> also do people really want humanoid robots at home?

The other day I was reflecting on how currently the notion of supervising AI agents sounds like my idea of hell and I'm glad I can mostly do my job without doing it.

But conversely, I'd absolutely love having even 1 humanoid robot which could follow simple verbal directions like "hold this tape measure" or "raise your end a little higher" while working as a collaborative team around the house.

There is an absolute ton of practical jobs where another human form is needed, but one person is pretty obviously leading the activity and just needs "another pair of hands".

A pair of bots which can carry sheet rock over uneven ground around a house? Absolute game changer.

So you think replacing humans on the battlefield with human shaped robots...why? It makes no sense in the same way that humans on a car production line are not replaced by human shaped robots, instead by far stronger, far more capable, far faster robots designed for purpose, not mimicry. There's nothing about a battlefield that makes it a good use case for human shaped robots.

>also do people really want humanoid robots at home?

For the right price and capabilities? Sure. I pay various people to do things around the house. Replacing those people with a humanoid robot is probably a big ask. But I'd certainly consider it if possible and cost-effective.

https://bostondynamics.com/solutions/warehouse-automation/tr... they have a few hundred of these in operation.

For anyone not familiar with the reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo

*actual robot demos

Yesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.

Because it is.

The average (and above-average?) investor really does not understand tech.

I was trying to think about the why with Cursor, and the only thing that makes sense to me is they wanted experts in making harnesses so that they can pivot that expertise towards building harnesses intended for autonomous agents to use instead of humans. There's no world where a 60 billion IDE makes sense.

Not just an IDE, look at the prospect, they’ll soon lead in farming, genetics, AGI and teleportation. Remember to price in the TAM of that!

Time travel!

I think it's more that Space X's valuation is ridiculous, and they need acquisitions that are ridiculous to pretend that the emperor is still wearing clothes.

When cursor is selling for $60B, then grok has to really be worth several times that, right?

I don't know that I disagree, but this had to be in the works before the IPO right? Acquisitions don't typically materialize in a timeline of <1 week (or perhaps they do when someone walks in and offers 60B...)

Inflating SpaceX's perceived value would have been the primary goal for a lot of the business for at least the past year leading up to the IPO.

It's probably a bit of both. Space X is overvalued, and so is Cursor. It's easier for Space X to justify buying Cursor for $60B than it would be for other, because it's a rounding error compared to Space X's valuation.

I haven't tried Cursor, and I'm sure it's a perfectly good IDE, but given that JetBrains was valued at $7B in 2021 [1] $60B seems rather high.

1) https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-at-7-b...,

How far we have come that 60B could be considered a rounding error for a company

The US has GDP of 32 trillion. In an economy of that size, you would expect a few companies for which 60B is not crazy money, although rounding error is really stretching it.

This was just ~10% of boston dynamics at that price. HN pro-tip: before commenting, read the articles not just the headlines.

Still only 3b valuation, or 20x less than Cursor.

Ack Yep my bad. Actually my bad for reading the “comment” incorrectly and being out of the loop with the cursor sale til now.

> This was just ~10% of boston dynamics at that price. HN pro-tip: before commenting, read the articles not just the headlines.

I'm not sure if you're following your own advice...?

The ~10% just sold was bought for $325 million.

The total price they paid was $1.205 billion ($880 million in 2021, $325 million now).

The $1.1 billion figure in the HN headline is kind of just wrong and presumably based on what they considered to be Boston Dynamics' total valuation in 2021, but represents neither what they paid for the ~10% nor the actual total they paid over both transactions.

$325M for 9.65% implies a valuation of around $3.4 billion, so it's more like 18x.

Regardless, Boston Dynamics has been burning cash for 35 years and all they have to show for it are some fancy demos and trial deployments. Eventually you have to wonder what their future prospects are.

> Eventually you have to wonder what their future prospects are.

Boston Dynamics is a defense contractor, their future prospects are designing and manufacturing war machines, the same thing they’ve always done.

The dog robots are meant to carry stuff/support combat troops.

The humanoid robots are designed to rescue injured soldiers and possibly other risky tasks.

They may have plans to commercialize these robots, but I’m not sure where the consumer/commercial market for robotic dogs is. Jobs that need machines to carry heavy stuff already have solutions and have had them for a long time, and they’re safe to operate as long as you’re not in a combat zone. I guess it would be nice to have a robot dog portage my packs and canoe for me in the BWCA but I’m not spending new car money for that.

Those robot dogs have been looking amazing for as long as I can think. What's in the way of the big military contract?

In Ukraine they are using tracked autonomuous vehicles for the same tasks. Much cheaper.

It is remarkable how rarely alternative movement styles like slug crawling, flying or rolling get used in the animal kingdom to move around compared to 2-8 legs. If a company can figure out how to do legs and manufacture them cheaply I expect there'd a be a lot of money in that; they must have some sort of practical advantage somewhere in warefare.

Although the tracked drones we see starting to appear in war are terrifying and I'd rather not be on the receiving end of them.

Because biological slip rings don't scale, not because it wouldn't be more efficient on an energy standpoint.

Looking at actual combat robots in Ukraine Boston Dynamics robots are conceptually different and not necessarily in a convincing manner.

The future is unlimited however the Operating System for robotics, from the outside looking in seems to be the biggest stumbling block the company that can pull it off would be/become the ultimate vertical computer company on the planet. I don't think Hyundai (software) can pull it off.

I know quite a lot of people who use (or used to use) Cursor. I don't personally know one single person who owns a humanoid robot. YMMV.

I know quite lot of people who could fork vs code and write a passable agent harness. I don't know one single person who could build a humanoid robot and I majored in mechatronjcs.

SpaceX paid that $60 billion entirely in stock. In other words, they traded 2% of their own inflated stock value, for 100% of Cursor's inflated stock value. This is actually a great deal for SpaceX.

If they had paid $60 billion dollars in cash for Cursor, it would have been a ripoff.

Couldn't they just have sold their stock for dollars?

Dumping $60 billion worth of shares would tank the stock price, causing it to not convert into anywhere near $60 billion.

You can't sell 60b worth of stock without moving the price. It has to be dribbled out over time.

Some buyees of course insist on cash. Which moves the effect of stock sales onto the buyer. Most buyers would prefer to pay in stock as it doesn't impact cash flow at all.

So, a all-stock deal already has the future-price of the stock built in. Which probably (but not necessarily) inflates the headline number.

In other words, let's say I offer you 60b stock[1], or 30b cash. Which would you take? If you're risk adverse, take 30b cash. You can buy a nice diversified portfolio with that.

If you're confident SpaceX will be around say 10 years from now, and still worth good money, then take the 60b and sell it slowly over a long time. It's a big bet though (if SpaceX goes into liquidation, all stock immediately goes to 0.) Of course if you think the price will ultimately go up, then it's a good choice as well.

[1] there are likely some boundaries which dictate when you can start selling the stock.

Given the company is supposedly worse $2.5T, one would think the impact of selling 2.4% of that would have a fairly small impact on the price.

There's a lot of insanity in the stock market. SpaceX is apparently worth more than the entire aviation industry[1] and Tesla is worth more than all other cars makers combined, or just about[2].

1) https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1u7aiwg/oc...

2) https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1hro33r/global...

The insane valuation is for Elon meme vibes and the "vision" of "colonizing Mars", not any of the products.

Boston Dynamics robots can do gymnastics...

Hey, Hyundai isn't "just a car company"

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