What is Rainbow Robotics? Samsung's 35% robot maker now earns 40% of its sales from mobile humanoids

Rainbow Robotics is a Korean robot maker founded in 2011 by researchers from KAIST's humanoid lab, and since December 31, 2024 its largest shareholder has been Samsung Electronics with 35.00%. The short answer to what it has become is in its half-year report filed with DART on August 14: in the first six months of 2026, mobile humanoids such as the wheeled, two-armed RB-Y1 brought in KRW 8.65 billion, 40.5% of KRW 21.38 billion in consolidated sales, more than its collaborative robots at KRW 4.50 billion.

That is the first time the company has broken out humanoid revenue, and it changes how the business should be read. Rainbow is still described in most coverage as a cobot company with a famous humanoid past. The filing shows a research-platform vendor whose biggest product line sells mainly to universities, government institutes and public bodies, and whose share price prices something larger than either. This piece sets out the numbers, compares them with rivals in MEKAWIRE's database, and states what would change our view.

Revenue grew faster than Korea's cobot leader, and the mix shifted

Rainbow's consolidated revenue rose from KRW 19.35 billion in 2024 to KRW 34.12 billion in 2025, a 76.4% increase, and the first half of 2026 alone reached 62.6% of the 2025 total, according to the filing. Doosan Robotics, the best-known Korean cobot maker, reported KRW 32.98 billion for 2025 in its own DART filing, down 29.6%. On disclosed figures Rainbow's 2025 revenue was 3.5% larger than Doosan's.

Exports carried much of the change. Overseas sales in the first half were KRW 6.46 billion, already 103% of the full 2025 export figure of KRW 6.24 billion, lifting the export share from 18.3% to 30.2%. Service revenue, which the filing books separately from products, was KRW 7.24 billion in the half after KRW 9.09 billion in 2025 and KRW 0.81 billion in 2024. The company lists 38 system-integration partners for cobots and 40 dealers in 16 countries for its telescope mounts, a niche business built on the same harmonic-drive reducers its robot joints use.

Growth came with heavier costs, which is where the story turns.

The humanoid line sells to labs, and losses widened

The filing describes the mobile humanoid as a research and demonstration platform with 7-degree-of-freedom arms on a wheeled base, sold directly to universities, state research institutes and public agencies, often for national R&D projects. Rainbow's own product page lists the RB-Y1 with 20 degrees of freedom and a 3 kg arm payload, and its 2024 pre-order release priced it at USD 80,000. Daedong, the farm-machinery maker, said on August 13 that it will co-develop the AGROID greenhouse robot by putting Rainbow's two-armed upper body on its own autonomous base.

Operating loss widened to KRW 3.59 billion in the half, a margin of minus 16.8%, from minus 7.3% for 2025. Research spending was KRW 6.37 billion, 30% of revenue, of which government grants covered KRW 2.54 billion or 39.8%. The filing lists ten government projects, including trade-ministry humanoid programmes for dexterous industrial humanoids (to December 2027) and display-process humanoids built on AI foundation models (to December 2028), and a health-ministry project for a humanoid surgical assistant using vision-language-action models (to 2029). Inventory rose to KRW 23.18 billion at June 30 from KRW 15.52 billion at the end of 2025 and KRW 7.16 billion a year earlier, and quick assets fell from KRW 84.76 billion to KRW 72.00 billion. The new headquarters and factory, a KRW 29.47 billion investment, was completed on March 27, 2026 according to a corrected DART disclosure.

The operating picture is a small, growing, loss-making hardware maker. The market picture is different.