Hyundai Boston Dynamics buyout: 30,000 robots a year

Samantha: Welcome to The State of Tech, The European Edition, Saturday June twenty, 2026. I'm Samantha Lawrence.

Bob: And I'm Bob Russell. Today: Hyundai takes full control of Boston Dynamics as SoftBank walks away, Meta locks in massive new computing power for its AI push, a critical Splunk security flaw being exploited right now, the UK opens an AI testing ground for medicines, and to close out, two things you can actually use today: the focus tool Cold Turkey Blocker and the open-source video editor Shotcut. Let's start in Seoul.

Hyundai buys out SoftBank to take full ownership of Boston Dynamics for 325 million dollars.

Samantha: Hyundai is set to take complete ownership of Boston Dynamics, the robotics company famous for those backflipping humanoid robots and the dog-like Spot. The Korean carmaker is buying SoftBank's remaining stake of just under ten percent for 325 million dollars, with the deal expected to clear Hyundai's board on Monday. That ends SoftBank's involvement entirely and gives Hyundai undivided control over one of the most recognisable names in robotics.

Bob: And the timing is everything here. Boston Dynamics is moving its Atlas humanoid robot from research showcase to commercial factory work, and Hyundai is reportedly planning a facility that can churn out thirty thousand humanoid robots a year. That is a serious industrial bet. We are no longer talking about viral YouTube videos of robots doing parkour. We are talking about machines built to stand next to human workers on car assembly lines, and Hyundai wants the supply chain entirely in-house.

Samantha: The scale also tells you where the carmakers think the next decade is heading. Tesla has its Optimus project, China has multiple humanoid startups backed by Beijing, and Hyundai clearly wants to make sure it owns the brains and the body of its own robot workforce, without a third party able to shift strategy or sell on.

Bob: For European manufacturing this matters. Germany, France, Italy and Spain all run large automotive supply chains, and many of those plants are direct competitors to Hyundai. If thirty thousand humanoids a year really come online, European carmakers face a choice: buy from Hyundai, partner with Chinese suppliers, or back European robotics names like ABB, Kuka, or the various startups in Munich and Zurich. Brussels has already flagged industrial robotics as strategically sensitive, and an all-Korean robotics champion will sharpen that conversation. Trade unions in Wolfsburg and Turin will be watching closely too, because thirty thousand machines a year is not a pilot, that is industrial-scale automation.

Meta signs new deals with Crusoe for 1.6 gigawatts of AI computing capacity in Texas and Missouri.

Samantha: Meta has reportedly signed fresh agreements with data centre developer Crusoe to lock in a huge amount of extra AI computing power. The deal covers two sites, one in Childress, Texas, the other in Warrenton, Missouri, and together they give Meta around 1.6 gigawatts of capacity. To put that in perspective, that is roughly the output of a large nuclear reactor, dedicated entirely to training and running AI models.

Bob: And this fits the pattern of the past year. Meta, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are signing multi-gigawatt deals like they are signing mobile phone contracts. Mark Zuckerberg has been explicit that Meta wants to lead on AI agents, the kind of assistants that book your travel, write your code, or handle customer service end to end. None of that runs on a laptop. It runs on enormous farms of specialised chips, and Meta is making sure it has the electrons and the silicon to feed them.

Samantha: The bottleneck story is shifting too. A year ago everyone talked about chip shortages. Now the constraint is power. Crusoe specialises in building data centres next to cheap energy sources, including stranded gas in oil fields, and that is exactly why hyperscalers are queueing up for their capacity.

Bob: For Europe this has two consequences. First, the cost. Every gigawatt that Meta locks up in Texas is compute capacity that European companies cannot rent. Mid-sized European AI startups already pay a premium to access top-tier chips, and that gap will widen. Second, the location. None of this capacity is being built in the European Union, partly because power is cheaper in the US and partly because European permitting is slower. The European Commission has talked about AI gigafactories, but the gap between American announcements and European blueprints keeps growing.

Samantha: Quick interruption. If you listen to The State of Tech regularly, hit that like button and subscribe, that way you'll never miss an episode. Okay, moving on.

A critical Splunk Enterprise flaw is being actively exploited days after disclosure, CISA orders emergency patching.

Bob: There is a serious cybersecurity story breaking today. A critical vulnerability in Splunk Enterprise, the software that thousands of large organisations use to monitor their networks and security logs, is being actively exploited in attacks. The flaw lets an attacker who is not logged in at all create or wipe files on the server, through a database component that was shipped without proper authentication checks. The American cyber agency CISA has added it to its emergency list and ordered federal agencies to patch by Sunday.

Samantha: And the irony is painful. Splunk is the tool that security teams use to detect attacks. So an unpatched Splunk server is essentially the watchtower with the door left wide open. Once an attacker is in there, they can read every log the company collects, which often includes credentials, customer data, and the trail of every other system on the network. It is an attacker's dream.

Bob: Researchers say exploitation started within days of the public disclosure, which is becoming the norm. The window between a patch being released and attackers weaponising it has shrunk to almost nothing, partly because automated scanning tools now sweep the entire internet within hours of any new vulnerability hitting the news.

Samantha: For European organisations the message is direct. Splunk is widely used across European banks, telecom operators, energy companies and government bodies. Under the NIS2 directive, many of those organisations are now legally required to manage exactly this kind of vulnerability and report incidents promptly. So if a European bank or hospital gets breached through this flaw in the next two weeks, it will not just be a security incident, it will be a regulatory one too. The practical action this weekend is simple: identify every Splunk server, patch it, and check the logs for signs that someone got there first.

The UK opens an AI sandbox to test artificial intelligence tools for drug safety and side-effect prediction.

Bob: The UK's medicines regulator, the MHRA, has launched something it calls an AI sandbox, a controlled environment where researchers and drug developers can test artificial intelligence tools that predict side effects, improve safety monitoring and speed up drug development. The idea is to let companies try AI on real regulatory problems without the risk of breaking the rules, and to let regulators see for themselves how reliable these tools actually are.

Samantha: This is a different model from what we usually see. Normally regulators wait until a technology is widely deployed and then write rules after the fact. The MHRA is trying the opposite: build the evidence base before the technology spreads. They specifically want to know whether AI can spot how drugs behave differently across patient groups, for example by age, gender or ethnicity, which is a long-standing weakness in clinical trials.

Bob: And it slots into a broader UK strategy. Since leaving the European Union, the UK has positioned itself as a more flexible regulator for life sciences, partly to attract drug development that might otherwise go to the US or Switzerland. An AI sandbox aimed at medicines is a concrete piece of that pitch.

Samantha: For the European Union there is a clear comparison. The EU's AI Act classifies medical AI as high-risk and imposes strict obligations, but it does not yet offer this kind of practical testing ground at the medicines agency level. Industry groups in Brussels have been arguing for exactly this sort of structured experimentation. If the UK sandbox produces useful evidence in the next year, expect pressure on the European Medicines Agency to follow suit, otherwise drug developers may simply route their AI projects through London first.

Bob: And to close out, two things you can actually use today.

Cold Turkey Blocker is the no-nonsense focus app that genuinely stops you reopening distractions.

Samantha: First up is a productivity tool called Cold Turkey Blocker. It is a desktop application for Windows and Mac that lets you block websites, applications, and even the entire internet for set periods of time. The hook is that it actually works, because unlike many focus apps, once you start a blocking session you genuinely cannot get out of it by uninstalling the app or restarting your computer.

Bob: That sounds slightly terrifying, but users say that is precisely the point. Most focus apps are easy to bypass, which is why people end up back on social media within twenty minutes. Cold Turkey takes a harder line. You can schedule recurring blocks, for example no news sites between nine and twelve, no social media during the workday, and you can lock those schedules so you cannot edit them in a weak moment.

Samantha: There is a free version that handles basic website blocking, which is plenty for most people, and a one-off paid upgrade of around forty dollars that adds application blocking, scheduling and the locked modes. No subscription, which is increasingly rare. It works entirely on your own machine, so nothing about your browsing is sent to a cloud service, which is a useful detail for anyone in Europe worried about workplace privacy or GDPR-sensitive setups.

Bob: Reviewers often describe it as the tool people pick when softer apps have failed. Setup takes maybe ten minutes: install it, pick the sites and apps you want gone during work hours, set a schedule, and let it run. The simplest starting point is to block the top three sites you know steal your attention, just during morning hours, for one week, and see what happens to the rest of your day.

Shotcut is the free, open-source video editor that handles serious projects without a subscription.

Samantha: The second pick is Shotcut, a free, open-source video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is the kind of tool that quietly does what expensive subscription software does, without asking for a monthly fee or an account. If you ever need to trim a holiday video, cut together a presentation, or edit a podcast clip, Shotcut handles it.

Bob: It is genuinely capable. You get multi-track timelines, a wide range of video and audio formats, colour correction, transitions, audio mixing, and support for higher resolution footage including 4K. It is maintained by an open-source community, which means it gets regular updates and there are no hidden upsells. Crucially, all editing happens on your own computer, so your footage never leaves the device.

Samantha: The trade-off is that the interface looks a bit dated and the learning curve is steeper than some consumer apps. But there is a large library of free tutorials on YouTube, and reviewers consistently praise it as the most powerful free option once you get past the first hour of clicking around. For European users in particular it is a nice alternative to the dominant American subscription suites, with no data leaving your machine and no account required.

Bob: A practical first project: open a single video clip, cut out the parts you do not need, add one transition and a title card, and export it. That covers ninety percent of what most people ever need a video editor for, and you can do it in under an hour without paying anything.

Samantha: Today we covered: Hyundai taking full ownership of Boston Dynamics, Meta's huge new AI computing deals with Crusoe, the actively exploited Splunk security flaw, the UK's new AI sandbox for medicines, and two things to try yourself: the focus app Cold Turkey Blocker and the free video editor Shotcut.

Bob: Want to know more or react? Visit stateoftech.eu or email us at info@doorzetters.net.

Bob: State of Tech, the tech world in 15 minutes.