Boston Dynamics and DeepMind form new AI partnership

Robotics partnership aims to combine Boston Dynamics’ athletic intelligence with Google DeepMind’s foundational capabilities Joint research utilizing Gemini Robotics foundation models and new fleet of Atlas robots will begin this year  LAS VEGAS (Jan. 5, 2026) – Boston Dynamics, the global leader in mobile robotics, and Google DeepMind, the world’s premiere AI lab, have formed a new AI partnership designed to bring a new era of artificial intelligence to humanoid robots. Announced at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the two teams aim to integrate cutting edge Gemini Robotics AI foundation models with Boston Dynamics’ new Atlas® robots. The strategic partnership will focus on enabling humanoids to complete a wide variety of industrial tasks and is expected to become a driving force of manufacturing transformation, beginning in the automotive industry. The joint research effort, expected to kick off in the coming months, will be conducted at both companies. “We are thrilled to be partnering with the Google DeepMind team,” said Alberto Rodriguez, Director of Robot Behavior for Atlas at Boston Dynamics. “We are building the world’s most capable humanoid, and we knew we needed a partner that could help us establish new kinds of visual-language-action models for these complex robots. Nobody in the world is better suited than DeepMind to build reliable, scalable models that can be deployed safely and efficiently across a wide variety of tasks and industries.” Long known for its robots’ athleticism and impressive physical abilities, Boston Dynamics only announced its intention to build a commercial humanoid in 2024, after it became clear that recent AI advances had accelerated the pace of how robots could be trained and deployed into real-world applications. Google DeepMind is one of the leading frontier labs and in recent years has been advancing its robot AI foundation models like Gemini Robotics, built on the large-scale, multi-modal Gemini model. Its models are designed to allow robots of any shape and size to perceive, reason, use tools and interact with humans. “We developed our Gemini Robotics models to bring AI into the physical world,” said Carolina Parada, Senior Director of Robotics at Google DeepMind. “We are excited to begin working with the Boston Dynamics team to explore what’s possible with their new Atlas robot as we develop new models to expand the impact of robotics, and to scale robots safely and efficiently.” The two teams provided additional details about the partnership to reporters during Hyundai’s scheduled CES media presentation. Hyundai Motor Group is the majority shareholder of Boston Dynamics.