Rainbow Robotics (KOSDAQ: 277810): Cobots, Humanoids and Samsung
Rainbow Robotics was founded by the KAIST researchers who built HUBO, Korea's first bipedal walking robot. Two decades of joint, control and actuator know-how later, it sells collaborative arms and mobile manipulators — and since the end of 2024 it has been consolidated as a Samsung Electronics subsidiary, which makes it Samsung's answer to Hyundai owning Boston Dynamics.
Who they are
HUBO was Korea's first full bipedal walking humanoid, built at KAIST in the mid-2000s, and it later won the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2015. The researchers behind it founded Rainbow Robotics in 2011 to commercialise the underlying technology, which is a more meaningful origin story than it sounds: bipedal walking forces you to solve joint torque control, dynamic balance and actuator design simultaneously, and nobody solves those by accident.
The commercial business that came out of that work is broader than humanoids. Rainbow makes RB series collaborative robot arms, the RBM-S100 compact autonomous logistics robot, the RB-Y1 bimanual mobile manipulator, quadrupeds, and — charmingly — ultra-precision astronomical mounts, a legacy product line that happens to need exactly the same arc-second positioning expertise as a robot joint.
It is a small company by headcount, around 130 employees, based in Daejeon rather than Seoul. That matters culturally: Daejeon is Korea's research-institute city, and Rainbow behaves more like a lab that learned to manufacture than a manufacturer that hired researchers.
What they do
The revenue-generating core today is collaborative robots — arms designed to work next to people without a safety cage, sold into manufacturing, food service and laboratory automation. This is a real, competitive market with real customers, and it is where Rainbow's income statement comes from.
The strategic product is RB-Y1, a wheeled dual-arm mobile manipulator launched in 2024 at around $80,000 as a research platform for AI teams. MIT, UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech have taken it up. Selling a robot body to AI researchers is a deliberately clever position: it makes Rainbow's hardware the substrate that other people's vision-language-action models get trained on, which is a form of standard-setting that costs less than building the models yourself.
A bipedal humanoid is on the roadmap, and Samsung has stated the point of raising its stake was to accelerate development of advanced humanoids by combining its AI and software with Rainbow's robotics. Rainbow has also partnered outside the Samsung orbit — in February 2024 it teamed with Schaeffler Group and the Korea Electronics Technology Institute to develop mobile manipulators, linking it to one of the largest actuator suppliers moving into this space.
How they make money
2025 revenue was KRW 34.1 billion, up 76.4% year over year from KRW 19.4 billion, with net income of KRW 1.4 billion, down 33.4%. Read that pairing carefully: revenue is compounding fast off a small base, and profit is not following, because the company is spending on humanoid development while its cobot business carries the costs.
Samsung's involvement came in two steps. It first bought 14.7% for KRW 86.8 billion in 2023, then exercised a call option at the end of 2024 to lift the stake to about 35% for a further KRW 267 billion — roughly $181 million — becoming the largest shareholder and consolidating Rainbow into its financial statements. Samsung simultaneously created a Future Robotics Office and a synergy council with Rainbow.
Being a Samsung subsidiary cuts both ways. It provides capital, AI capability, a manufacturing partner and an obvious first customer in Samsung's own factories and appliance ecosystem. It also means minority shareholders own a company whose strategic direction is set by a 35% holder with its own priorities.
Where it sits in the value chain
Rainbow sits in Stage 7 — Robot builders, the stage that shares a name with two very different businesses. Industrial arm and cobot makers have decades of revenue and installed base; humanoid developers have order books and roadmaps. Rainbow is unusual in straddling both inside one small company.
As a builder it is a customer of every stage upstream: precision reducers, actuators and joint modules, sensing, on-board compute and batteries all arrive as purchase orders from here. Its own competitive claim is the accumulated joint and control know-how from the HUBO lineage — which is worth exactly as much as the cost curve allows it to be, because a humanoid competing at $20,000 cannot carry premium components everywhere.
The bigger trend
Korea is running three parallel corporate bets on robotics: Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics and has Mobis building its actuators, LG took a controlling stake in US service-robot maker Bear Robotics, and Samsung consolidated Rainbow Robotics. Add a government-backed K-Humanoid Alliance and the highest robot density per worker of any country, and the ecosystem argument is genuinely strong.
What is not yet resolved is whether a company of Rainbow's size can compete in humanoids against Tesla's manufacturing scale, Chinese cost structures and the venture capital behind Figure and its peers. Its plausible path is not "build the best humanoid" but "be the platform Samsung deploys and researchers standardise on." That is a narrower, more defensible ambition — and one that depends on Samsung continuing to want it.
What to watch
- Whether cobot revenue growth continues at a pace that funds humanoid development without external capital.
- Any concrete Samsung deployment — robots working in Samsung factories or shipping inside a Samsung product line — rather than joint development announcements.
- RB-Y1 unit traction with AI labs, the clearest proxy for whether Rainbow becomes a research standard.
- Timing and specification of the bipedal humanoid, and how much of its bill of materials is made in-house versus bought.
- Whether the Schaeffler and KETI mobile-manipulator collaboration produces a commercial product.
Related companies
🇰🇷The other Korean bet: Hyundai's actuator supplier for Boston Dynamics' Atlas.
🇯🇵Supplier class: precision reducers bought by the dozen per robot.
🇰🇷The vendor-neutral software layer that manages mixed robot fleets.
Also in this stage but not yet profiled: Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA), Hyundai Motor (KRX: 005380), UBTech Robotics (HKEX: 9880), Doosan Robotics (KOSPI: 454910), FANUC (TSE: 6954) and Yaskawa Electric (TSE: 6506).
FAQ
Does Samsung own Rainbow Robotics?
Samsung Electronics is the largest shareholder with about 35%, and Rainbow is consolidated as a subsidiary in Samsung's financial statements. Samsung acquired 14.7% for KRW 86.8 billion in 2023, then exercised a call option at the end of 2024 to raise the stake for a further KRW 267 billion. Rainbow remains separately listed on KOSDAQ.
Does Rainbow Robotics sell a humanoid robot today?
Not a commercial bipedal humanoid. Its shipping products are RB series collaborative arms, the RBM-S100 logistics robot, quadrupeds, precision astronomical mounts, and the RB-Y1 wheeled dual-arm mobile manipulator sold as a research platform at around $80,000. A bipedal humanoid is on the roadmap and is the stated purpose of the Samsung collaboration.
What is RB-Y1 and who uses it?
A wheeled, two-armed mobile manipulator introduced in 2024 as a research platform for AI teams. MIT, UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech are among the institutions using it. Selling to AI labs positions Rainbow's hardware as the body that other organisations' robot learning models get trained on.
Is Rainbow Robotics profitable?
Marginally. 2025 revenue rose 76.4% to KRW 34.1 billion with net income of KRW 1.4 billion, down 33.4% from the prior year as development spending increased. Profit at this scale is thin enough that it can move in either direction on a single quarter's costs.