Samsung Electronics has been quietly developing a humanoid robot in-house, separate from its subsidiary Rainbow Robotics, with the project reportedly at an advanced stage, according to ZDNet Korea. The company formalized its robotics ambitions last month by establishing the RX (Robotics eXperience) Business Office reporting directly to CEO TM Roh — a structural move industry observers read as a signal that Samsung is escalating its push into humanoid robotics at the executive level, RobotsBeat reported.
Manufacturing Data as a Training Moats
Samsung's in-house humanoid is said to outperform major domestic competitors, drawing on the company's hardware manufacturing expertise and operational data spanning home appliances, smartphones, semiconductors and displays. A dedicated Data Factory is planned at Samsung's Gumi campus to convert existing process data into a robot training system and simulate real-world scenarios before deployment. On the AI side, Samsung has developed Samsung Gauss, its own large language model, providing internal foundation-model capability without dependence on external AI providers.
On hardware, Samsung is developing proprietary actuators — the joints of a robot, integrating motors, controllers and reducers, and one of the primary cost and performance bottlenecks in humanoid manufacturing — using motor technologies originally designed for home appliances. Samsung Foundry already manufactures Nvidia's robot chips under contract, giving the company direct insight into the compute architecture that current physical AI systems require.
Dual-Track Strategy
Samsung appointed Lee Dong-geon, a former Hyundai Motor executive who led Hyundai's robotics strategy including the operational direction of Boston Dynamics, as head of its Robotics Strategy Team, and is recruiting robotics engineers at Samsung Research America and Samsung Research Beijing. The internal program runs parallel to Rainbow Robotics, the South Korean humanoid maker in which Samsung acquired a majority stake in 2023 — a dual-track approach that lets Samsung maintain its portfolio investment while developing proprietary hardware that leverages its unique manufacturing and data assets. Samsung has not publicly confirmed the in-house humanoid program.
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