Samsung takes 35% of Rainbow Robotics for 267.5 billion won and puts a humanoid office under its CEO

Samsung Electronics said on 31 December 2024 that it would exercise a call option to lift its holding in Rainbow Robotics from 14.7% to 35%, making the Korean humanoid pioneer its largest shareholder and a consolidated subsidiary. In the same announcement the company created a Future Robotics Office reporting directly to the chief executive and named Rainbow co-founder Oh Jun-ho, an honorary professor at KAIST, as its head.

The share purchase agreement, signed on 30 December 2024 and filed with the Korea Exchange the next day, covers 3,935,814 Rainbow Robotics shares for a total of 267,462,550,960 won, an average of 67,956 won a share. According to the filing, the price per share follows a formula fixed in the shareholders' agreement the parties signed when Samsung first invested in 2023. Samsung's holding rises from 2,854,136 shares, or 14.71%, to 6,789,950 shares, or 35.00%, and the disclosure states the purchase is paid entirely from Samsung's own funds for the purpose of management participation.

The sellers are the founding group. Under the version of the contract amended in March 2025, Oh sold 2,406,586 shares at 67,471 won each, while Lee Jung-ho, Heo Jung-woo, Lim Jung-soo and Yoon Hye-sun sold at 68,719 won. The original December filing had listed seven sellers, including Oh Su-jung and Oh Erick Soohyung, before the amendment removed them and shifted the volume to Oh and Yoon without changing the total price. Closing depended on government approvals and took place on 12 March 2025, Rainbow Robotics said in its change of largest shareholder filing that day. Oh's personal stake fell from 17.37% to 4.97%.

That closing filing also shows how control was assembled. Counting Lee, Heo and Lim, whom it lists as related parties of the new controlling shareholder, the Samsung side holds 8,076,414 shares, or 41.63%. Oh and six related parties had held 8,517,679 shares, or 43.91%, before the deal. The December disclosure says Samsung may still exercise a call option over the sellers' remaining 4,581,865 shares, with no obligation to do so, and may designate directors after closing; new directors were to be appointed at Rainbow's 14th annual general meeting.

Samsung's newsroom put its 2023 entry price at 86.8 billion won for 14.7%, which brings its disclosed outlay for a 35% stake to about 354.3 billion won. The Future Robotics Office is charged with developing future humanoid robots and the technologies around them. Oh retires from Rainbow to become a Samsung adviser and the office's first head. Samsung also set up a synergy council with Rainbow covering future robot technology, business strategy and market demand, and said Rainbow would gain access to Samsung's global sales network.

Rainbow Robotics was founded in 2011 by researchers from the Humanoid Robot Research Center at KAIST, the Hubo Lab, whose HUBO was Korea's first two-legged walking robot, according to Samsung. It trades on KOSDAQ under code 277810. Samsung said it would put Rainbow's collaborative robots, its dual-arm mobile manipulator and its autonomous mobile robots to work in manufacturing and logistics automation, using AI that learns from operating data and changes in the working environment.

Korea's other industrial groups have taken comparable routes. LG Electronics paid US$60 million in March 2024 for 21% of Bear Robotics, a US service robot maker founded in 2017, with a call option on up to 30% more, and said on 24 January 2025 that it had secured 51%. Hyundai Motor Group closed the purchase of an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank on 21 June 2021 in a deal that valued the US company at US$1.1 billion, according to SoftBank. Doosan Robotics, founded in 2015, is the listed collaborative robot arm of the Doosan group. Abroad, Tesla, Figure AI and Chinese makers such as Unitree are developing humanoids of their own.

The technology Samsung is buying is less about a single robot than about mechanical know-how. A collaborative robot is an arm built to work beside people without a cage; a dual-arm mobile manipulator puts two such arms on a wheeled base so it can move between stations and handle parts with both hands. Rainbow's engineers designed walking humanoids, joints and controllers in-house, which is the hardware discipline a humanoid programme needs. Samsung's stated plan is to pair that with its own AI and software and with data gathered on its factory and logistics floors.

The open questions are cost, people and focus. Samsung paid an average of 67,956 won a share in the option exercise, roughly 2.2 times the about 30,400 won a share implied by its 2023 entry, according to MEKAWIRE calculations from the two disclosed figures. The founders sold most of their stakes, and the founder who designed HUBO moved from Rainbow to Samsung. Rainbow stays listed, so minority shareholders remain, and neither company has published a humanoid product date or revenue target.

The next markers are whether Samsung uses the remaining call option on 4,581,865 shares, which robot models move from Rainbow catalogues into Samsung plants, and when the Future Robotics Office shows a humanoid. Samsung's third quarter 2026 results in late October and Rainbow's third quarter report in November 2026 are the nearest disclosure points.