Samsung Electronics established a new robotics division on July 21, 2026, consolidating years of scattered internal robotics work under a single executive reporting line as the company pushes toward commercializing humanoid robots. The RX (Robotics eXperience) Business Promotion Office now reports directly to co-chief executive Roh Tae-moon. Roh also heads the Device eXperience (DX) Division, the unit responsible for Samsung's smartphones, televisions and home appliances — the business line that generates the bulk of the company's consumer-facing revenue.
The reorganization pulls robotics strategy, core technology development and business execution together under one roof. Those functions had previously been split across several teams inside Samsung, according to the company's announcement, a structure that had slowed decision-making as rivals in South Korea, the United States and China raced toward working robots. Placing the new office directly under a co-CEO, rather than several layers below, signals that robotics has moved from an experimental side project to a named corporate priority alongside chips and mobile devices.
Leadership Drawn From Hyundai, Boston Dynamics and Three Universities
Executive Vice President Lee Dong-geun was named head of the new Robotics Strategy Team. Lee joined Samsung in May 2026 after leading robotics strategy at Hyundai Motor Group, where his responsibilities included direction of Boston Dynamics. The US robotics maker, best known for its Atlas and Spot machines, was acquired by Hyundai in 2021. Lee's move to Samsung had circulated as a rumor for weeks before the RX office announcement made it official, and it gives the new division a leader with direct experience running one of the industry's most closely watched robotics portfolios.
Oh Jun-ho, a mechanical engineering professor at KAIST, continues to lead Samsung's Future Robotics Office, a research unit that predates the RX reorganization. Two academic recruits join the new office alongside him: Kim Hyoun-jin, an aerospace engineering professor at Seoul National University who specializes in autonomous robots and robotics control, and Kim Ui-kyum, a mechanical engineering professor at Ajou University known for work on robotic-hand technology. The three professors span three different universities and three distinct technical specialties — control systems, autonomy and manipulation — rather than a single overlapping research focus.
Factory Floors Before Store Shelves
Robots will reach Samsung's own semiconductor, smartphone and home-appliance production lines as early as the second half of 2026, well before any consumer or retail rollout. Only after that internal deployment phase will the company expand step by step toward the broader commercial market, according to Samsung's own framing of the plan, rather than through a single product launch. The approach mirrors how other robotics makers have sequenced commercial rollouts in recent years. Hardware and software get tested first in controlled industrial settings, where conditions and safety requirements can be managed directly, before any consumer-facing version reaches the market.
The RX office is headquartered at Samsung's Seoul R&D Campus in Umyeon-dong, in the Seocho District, where two buildings are now dedicated exclusively to robotics research. Samsung also plans additional robotics research hubs in the United States, China and Japan, extending the reorganization beyond South Korea and placing engineering teams closer to other major robotics ecosystems. A separate data-collection facility is planned for Samsung's Gumi complex in North Gyeongsang Province. It will gather the training data needed to teach robotics AI systems how to operate on a real production floor, rather than relying solely on simulation.
A Larger Bet Already in Motion
An investment disclosure preceded the RX office announcement by roughly two weeks. Earlier in July, Samsung earmarked about 60 trillion won for South Korea's Yeongnam region, with roughly 19 trillion won of that total set aside specifically for Gumi. That funding covers a humanoid-robot mass-production line and the AI data-center infrastructure needed to support it. Together, the two announcements describe a single, connected buildout rather than two unrelated initiatives — one covering organizational structure and leadership, the other covering the physical plant needed to manufacture robots at scale.
The reorganization also builds on groundwork Samsung laid in 2024, when it acquired Rainbow Robotics, a South Korean robotics maker founded by researchers connected to KAIST's humanoid robotics program and known for its bipedal robot lineage. On an earnings call in January 2026, Samsung executives said the company aimed to deliver "tangible" results in humanoid robotics by the end of the year. The RX office is now the primary organizational vehicle for meeting that target, with a named leadership team and a defined production timeline attached to it for the first time.
Shares Rise as Coverage Frames a "Physical AI" Push
Shares in Samsung Electronics rose 6.76% on the day of the RX office announcement, and the benchmark Kospi index gained roughly 4%. Market coverage of the move largely framed it as Samsung's entry into "physical AI" — a term used across the technology industry for artificial intelligence systems designed to control machines operating in the physical world, such as robots and autonomous vehicles. That distinguishes it from software confined to a screen or a data center. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has been among the most prominent voices popularizing the term over the past two years, arguing that robotics represents the next major application for AI models originally trained on text and images.
Samsung is not alone in the region in chasing that shift. Automakers and electronics manufacturers across South Korea, Japan and China have each pursued their own robotics programs in recent years, from Hyundai's ownership of Boston Dynamics to a wider field of Chinese humanoid-robot startups now competing for factory and logistics contracts. The RX office puts Samsung's effort on a comparable organizational footing for the first time, with a named executive, a dedicated budget line and a public production timeline rather than a research project without a fixed delivery date.
No retail humanoid robot, final product name or consumer launch date has been announced by Samsung. The company's public statements so far describe an internal deployment timeline and a research infrastructure buildout spanning four countries, with the next concrete milestone tied to the second-half 2026 rollout on Samsung's own production lines.