Hyundai Mobis to build Atlas actuator prototypes from November as Q3 profit rises 17%

Hyundai Mobis will begin making prototype actuators for Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid at its Uiwang R&D center in Gyeonggi Province in November, the Hyundai Motor Group parts maker said on its third-quarter earnings call on Oct 30, as reported by Newsis and Digital Daily. The company said it will verify performance and reliability jointly with the customer ahead of supply that it expects to begin in 2028.

The same day Hyundai Mobis filed preliminary results with the Korea Exchange. Q3 revenue was KRW 15.72 trillion, up 4.6% from a year earlier, and operating profit KRW 914.1 billion, up 17.2%, according to the DART filing. Both fell from the second quarter, by 3.7% and 6.3%. Net profit dropped 35.7% to KRW 598.4 billion as pre-tax profit fell 27.0%; the filing gives no breakdown of the non-operating items. The operating margin works out at 5.8%, against 5.2% a year earlier (MEKAWIRE calculation from the filing).

What Mobis committed to on robotics

On the call the company said actuators are the part for which an order is confirmed, and that it is developing hand grippers, perception modules and controllers so it can sell to humanoid makers other than Boston Dynamics. It is standardising and modularising the actuator design, will set up an organisation dedicated to robotics core parts and expects to roughly double the people working on them. Annual R&D spending is expected to pass KRW 2 trillion for the first time this year. Robotics is not reported as a separate segment, so the quarter carries no robot revenue figure.

How this fits what was known

MEKAWIRE's records give the timeline. Mobis named Atlas as its first robotics customer at CES on Jan 7, saying actuators make up more than 60% of a humanoid's material cost. Hyundai Motor Group set a goal on Jan 5 of a production system able to build 30,000 robots a year by 2028, the same year Mobis now gives for supply. On Oct 26 ETNews reported that Mobis will take every Atlas actuator for mass production; the company has not confirmed that scope, and today's statement speaks only of a confirmed actuator order. Prototypes in November leave about two years of validation before volume supply.

The closest comparison is in MEKAWIRE's Korean robot-parts makers explainer: Mobis is the only Korean actuator supplier with a named humanoid customer, while start-ups such as AIDIN Robotics and Tesollo sell sensors and hands. The next signals are the IR meeting with domestic institutions on Nov 2 and whether the robotics organisation is announced in the group's year-end reshuffle.