Who are Boston Dynamics's decision-makers?

Boston Dynamics is navigating its deepest leadership transition in its 34-year history. Marc Raibert, the MIT professor and Leg Lab pioneer who co-founded the company in 1992, handed the CEO role to Robert Playter in 2019. Playter, who had joined the company in 1994 — just two years after founding — served as VP of Engineering, COO, and then CEO, overseeing Spot's commercial launch in 2020, Atlas's transformation from hydraulic research machine to a fully electric production robot, and the Hyundai acquisition that valued the company at $1.1 billion. Playter retired on February 27, 2026 after more than 30 years.

The leadership turnover extends well beyond Playter. CTO Aaron Saunders — chief hardware architect of Spot and Atlas, who spent 22 years at Boston Dynamics — departed in November 2025 to join Google DeepMind as VP of Robotics Hardware Engineering. Scott Kuindersma, VP of Robotics Research and the lead on Atlas's reinforcement-learning and foundation-model stack, left in January 2026 and is expected to join DeepMind in June 2026. COO Selma Svendsen and CSO Marc Theermann also departed in early 2026, per a May 2026 Semafor investigation. The concentration of departures to Google DeepMind is especially notable given that DeepMind is simultaneously a strategic AI partner (the Google DeepMind/Gemini integration into Atlas) and now a competitive talent destination.

Amanda McMaster, CFO since February 2020, is the de facto leader of the company through this transition. The board — ultimately accountable to Hyundai Motor Group, which owns approximately 90%+ of the company — is conducting an active CEO search with a preference for a leader capable of navigating the company's targeted 2027 Nasdaq IPO.

During the leadership transition, budget authority is more centralized than typical. For operational purchases — IT infrastructure, software tools, professional services, office supplies — department heads and procurement managers are the relevant buyers using the standard bostondynamics.com/contact vendor channel. For strategic or significant capital expenditure (manufacturing equipment, platform software, AI/ML infrastructure, major professional services engagements), decisions are flowing through Amanda McMaster and, for sufficiently large commitments, through Hyundai Motor Group's corporate oversight structure.

Historically, the CTO and VP of Engineering held significant influence over technical stack and vendor selection. With Aaron Saunders and Scott Kuindersma both gone and no named CTO replacement as of June 2026, technical buying decisions on robotics software and AI infrastructure may have slowed or escalated to interim leadership. The IPO preparation process is generating new buying activity in finance, legal, compliance, and investor-relations tooling — areas where the company is staffing up or upgrading systems to meet public-company readiness requirements. These represent high-probability new-vendor opportunities in 2026.

Boston Dynamics has approximately 1,500 employees as of June 2026, up from roughly 1,200 in 2024 before the December 2024 45-person layoff partially offset the hiring surge. The company grew rapidly through 2023–2024 (143 active job postings at peak, +140% YoY) focused on manufacturing engineers, software engineers for Orbit and Atlas AI, and commercial sales. The layoff affected primarily research roles and reflected a strategic pivot from pure R&D toward production scale and commercial execution.

The organization is structured around product lines (Spot, Stretch, Atlas) with historically engineering-heavy culture. That culture is evolving toward a more commercial operating model as the company transitions from a government-contract-funded entity to a product company with recurring customers, fleet software subscriptions, and manufacturing scale objectives. Hyundai's integration is deepening: the parent is deploying Atlas units in its RMAC facility and has announced a 30,000-unit-per-year production target, which will require substantial field-services, customer-success, and supply-chain infrastructure to build out. The company operates primarily from its Waltham, MA headquarters, with a software-focused satellite in Mountain View, CA.