Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics, founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Suwon, is Korea's largest company, with 2025 revenue of KRW 333.6 trillion (about USD 292 billion) and 259,149 employees. It has shown consumer robots for years, including the Bot Handy manipulator in 2022 and the rolling Ballie, but Ballie never shipped and was absent from CES 2026.

The humanoid strategy started with money rather than a machine. Samsung bought 14.7 percent of KAIST spin-off Rainbow Robotics for KRW 86.8 billion in 2023, then on 31 December 2024 exercised a call option worth KRW 267 billion (USD 182 million) to reach 35 percent and become the largest shareholder. At the same time it created a Future Robotics Office reporting to the CEO, led by Rainbow co-founder and HUBO creator Oh Jun-ho, who said at RoboWorld 2025 that Samsung was working on hands, actuators and sensors with Nvidia on the AI side.

In 2026 a Future Robotics Initiative Group recruited engineers in March, a Robotics eXperience (RX) division was set up in July, and on 10 August 2026 the Seoul Economic Daily reported an internal demonstration at the Umyeon R&D campus of an in-house humanoid prototype that handled a camera, reviewed by DX chief Roh Tae-moon. The stated plan is factory use inside Samsung affiliates first, consumers later. No robot has been shown publicly and no date has been given.