Samsung Electronics is now the largest shareholder of a Korean robot company — that is the line that shows up in news coverage.
What that line does not say is what the company actually puts in the box.
What goes in the box is arms: robot arms built with the safety system inside, so they can stand next to a person. They leave the building not yet knowing how to do anything.
Rainbow Robotics (레인보우로보틱스) · KRX: 277810 · KOSDAQ
Won amounts are converted at ₩1,337.9 per US dollar (Bank of Korea ECOS, KRW/USD base rate, 2026-09-10) for scale only.
What the company actually ships
Rainbow Robotics is listed on KOSDAQ under ticker 277810. KOSDAQ is the Korea Exchange’s secondary board, alongside the main KOSPI board.
The company makes four kinds of machines: robot arms that can stand beside a worker, four-legged walking robots, self-driving transport robots, and robots shaped like a human upper body.
The arms are called collaborative robots. Industrial robots were traditionally kept behind a fence because standing close to one was dangerous; a collaborative robot puts the safety system inside the machine, which is what lets the fence come off.
A collaborative robot is still a class of industrial robot — a serial manipulator arm — but it can be used in the same space as the worker.
That distinction matters less, for an investor, than what leaves the loading dock. What ships is closer to the body of a power tool: you buy the drill, and you decide what bit to fit and what to drill.
The robot arm works the same way. Whether it assembles, packs or inspects is decided by the plant that installs it.
The comparison breaks in one place. A power tool only needs a hand on it, while a robot arm has to be taught which motions to perform in which order — and that teaching is left entirely undone at the point of sale.
That undone part is where the steady stream of joint-development announcements sits.
The company was founded in 2011. According to Korean media reports, founder Oh Jun-ho took part in developing Hubo, a two-legged walking humanoid, in 2004 while a professor at KAIST.
The company’s annual report states that developing a human-shaped biped robot is how it secured the core components and underlying technologies behind today’s lineup.
Names get mixed together in news coverage, so it is worth separating them. The same reports say the founder left Rainbow Robotics when Samsung Electronics became the largest shareholder, and moved to head Samsung Electronics’ future robotics unit.
When the founder’s name and the company’s name appear in the same article, the two are now at different companies.
Who is buying the robots
For a company that sells bodies, the next question is who bought them and what they were bought to do.
This is normally the place for a market-share figure. The sources behind this article contain no measurement of the company’s share of the collaborative robot market, so the question gets answered along a different axis: who buys.
According to Korean media reports, Samsung Electronics built its position in three moves. It put about KRW 59.0 billion (about $44 million) into a rights issue in January 2023 for 10.22%, bought more off-market two months later to reach 14.7%, and signed a call option agreement in that same month.
On 31 December 2024 the option was exercised and the stake became 35.0%. Samsung Electronics became the largest shareholder and Rainbow Robotics became a subsidiary.
A second number deserves more attention than the stake. One media account puts roughly 27% of the company’s second-quarter 2026 revenue as coming from Samsung Electronics.
That makes the name a customer, not only an entry on the shareholder register.
One separation belongs here. Samsung Electronics has said it is developing its own humanoid robots in parallel with its use of Rainbow Robotics, so subsidiary status does not mean this company builds all of Samsung’s robots.
If you came looking for competitors: the sources behind this article name no domestic or overseas maker of the same products. Rather than fill that in, this article leaves it marked empty.
Why the two profit lines point in opposite directions
With the buyers in view, the next question is what came in. The income statement breaks an expectation.
Korean filers number their fiscal periods from incorporation, so this company’s 15th fiscal period is FY2025. The annual report for it was filed on 2026-03-20 through DART, the electronic disclosure system run by Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service, where listed companies publish their filings.
The figures below are consolidated — subsidiaries folded into one set of books, as opposed to separate (standalone) figures, which count the parent alone.
Selling robots lost money, and the final line still came out positive.
The distance between the two lines in FY2025 is KRW 3.9 billion (about $3 million). In FY2024 it ran the same direction, at KRW 5.1 billion (about $4 million). Two years in the same shape is not a coincidence of one year, but the filings cited here do not show where that money came from.
If you have seen both ‘years of losses’ and ‘return to profit’ written about this company, the two are reading different lines: the first is operating profit, the second is net income. Checking which one an article means removes the confusion.
There is one more thing to look at in where the growth came from. Domestic product sales rose from KRW 15.3 billion (about $11 million) in FY2024 to KRW 18.6 billion (about $14 million) in FY2025, an increase of roughly KRW 3.3 billion (about $2 million).
Total revenue over the same period rose by about KRW 14.8 billion (about $11 million) — larger than domestic product sales alone can explain.
More recent figures come from Korean media reports rather than filings. They give second-quarter 2026 revenue of about KRW 12.3 billion (about $9 million), up roughly 98% from the same quarter a year earlier, with an operating loss of about KRW 2.0 billion (about $1 million), and the operating loss as a share of revenue falling from about 33% to about 16%.
For the first half of 2026, the same reports give revenue of about KRW 21.4 billion (about $16 million) and an operating loss of about KRW 3.6 billion (about $3 million).
- Revenue: KRW 34.1 billion (about $26 million), 1.76x the prior period’s KRW 19.3 billion (about $14 million)
- Operating profit: KRW -2.5 billion (about -$2 million), after KRW -3.0 billion (about -$2 million) — negative two periods running
- Net income: KRW 1.4 billion (about $1 million), after KRW 2.1 billion (about $2 million) — positive two periods running
How far the use cases have spread
A structure that loses money at the operating line raises the obvious next question: is the work growing?
One thing first. The sources here contain no market-size estimate and no growth forecast for this industry, and this article will not supply one in their place.
What the annual report does give is the industry’s own history. Robots entered production floors in earnest in the 1960s, grew strongly in manufacturing sectors such as the automotive industry, and from 2006 spread into logistics, medical and food industries.
What that history shows is a direction: robots moved toward places where a person repeats the same motion. Factories first, then warehouses, hospitals and food plants.
Where the next step goes is not something these sources say, so that part is left to the reader.
One product fact sits on top of the structure. According to Korean media reports, mobile humanoids generated about KRW 8.7 billion (about $7 million) in the first half of 2026, more than 40% of total revenue.
One of the four product lines is producing a large share of revenue on its own.
A note on the lineup: AMR stands for autonomous mobile robot. Instead of a cart a person pushes, it finds its own route and carries the load.
When does an agreement become revenue
Having seen the structure, the last piece is how to place the individual news items you will run into. The headline that appears most often under this company’s name is an agreement being signed.
MOU means memorandum of understanding — a document saying two sides have agreed to work together.
Two examples. According to Korean media reports, the company is co-developing a manufacturing-focused dual-arm AI robot called the V2 with Plaif, with Rainbow Robotics supplying the robot hardware and Plaif supplying AI specialised in assembly and fastening.
The two had previously co-developed an automation solution for assembling automotive headlamps, and the reports say they plan to widen the V2’s application to manufacturing sectors such as automotive and electronics.
The other is a three-way agreement with Heonin Town Development and S-1, aimed at upgrading security in the Heonin Village urban development district. Its core idea is pulling people, fixed equipment and robots into a single security system.
S-1 plans to connect Rainbow Robotics’ AI security robot to its existing guard staffing and fixed security equipment. The robot supplements the existing system rather than patrolling on its own.
Performance descriptions need one layer of filtering. The claim that the robot can patrol stairs, ramps and uneven outdoor ground is what the company says, and the arrangement being the first case in Korea of an AI security robot installed as a security system in a residential space is likewise how it is described.
Here is the dividing line. Neither agreement carries a contract amount, a number of robots, or a delivery date — and without an amount and a date there is no way to know when any of it lands in revenue.
One last example of why a number should carry who measured it and when. For 1 September 2026, one report describes the share price as down 2.39% from the previous session while another gives the same figure with no sign, which can read as a rise.
For 3 September 2026 the same split appears: one account has it down 0.90%, another flat at 0%. Same trading session, different notation.
Two kinds of news, kept apart
Back to the opening comparison. What the company ships is like the body of a power tool: the arm, the four-legged robot and the transport robot all leave without a job assigned.
Industrial robots used to need a cage, which narrowed where they could go, and putting the safety system inside the machine is the problem collaborative robots solved. The teaching is still left over, and filling that gap is what the joint developments are for.
On the money: FY2025 consolidated revenue went from KRW 19.3 billion (about $14 million) to KRW 34.1 billion (about $26 million), the robot business lost KRW 2.5 billion (about $2 million) at the operating line, and the final line came out at KRW 1.4 billion (about $1 million) positive. The prior period had the same shape.
Samsung Electronics reached 35% in three steps starting January 2023 and, per Korean media reports, also accounted for about 27% of second-quarter 2026 revenue.
Where things stand today: more than 40% of first-half 2026 revenue came from mobile humanoids, according to those reports.
On the other side, the agreements announced in 2026 carry no amount, no quantity and no timing, and the filings cited here do not show where the KRW 3.9 billion (about $3 million) gap between operating profit and net income came from.
Those things are undisclosed in these sources, which is not the same as absent.
So one separation is worth keeping as you read news about this company. A body being bought is a different kind of news from a job being assigned.
The first shows up as a number in quarterly revenue. The second is a plan until an amount is attached, and telling them apart comes down to whether three things are present: amount, quantity and date.
Frequently asked questions
Q. Is Rainbow Robotics a Samsung company?
A. According to Korean media reports, Samsung Electronics exercised a call option on 31 December 2024, took its stake to 35.0%, became the largest shareholder and brought Rainbow Robotics in as a subsidiary. The same reports note that Samsung Electronics has said it is developing its own humanoid robots in parallel with its use of the company.
Q. How is a collaborative robot different from a plain industrial robot?
A. The annual report describes a collaborative robot as a class of industrial robot: a serial manipulator arm with safety systems built in. The difference is that the safety sits inside the machine, so it can be used in the same space as a worker.
Q. Is the company profitable or loss-making?
A. It depends which line you read. On a consolidated basis for FY2025, operating profit was KRW -2.5 billion (about -$2 million) while net income was KRW 1.4 billion (about $1 million). FY2024 pointed the same way, at KRW -3.0 billion (about -$2 million) and KRW 2.1 billion (about $2 million).
Q. Does an MOU announcement translate into revenue?
A. It is hard to read it that way. According to Korean media reports, the 2026 agreements — the joint development with Plaif and the three-way agreement with Heonin Town Development and S-1 — disclose no contract amount, no quantity and no delivery date. Without an amount and a date, there is no way to know when or how much is recorded as revenue.
Q. What does ‘the 15th fiscal period’ mean, and where are these filings published?
A. Korean filers number their fiscal periods from incorporation, so the 15th period is FY2025 here. The annual report for it was filed on 2026-03-20 through DART, the electronic disclosure system operated by Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service. Figures quoted from it in this article are consolidated, meaning subsidiaries are folded in, rather than separate (standalone) figures for the parent alone.
Sources
- https://dart.fss.or.kr/dsaf001/main.do?rcpNo=20260320000803
- https://rainbow-robotics.com/%ed%94%8c%eb%9d%bc%ec%9e%8e-%eb%a0%88%ec%9d%b8%eb%b3%b4%ec%9a%b0%eb%a1%9c%eb%b3%b4%ed%8b%b1%ec%8a%a4-%ec%a0%9c%ec%a1%b0-%ed%8a%b9%ed%99%94-ai-%ec%96%91%ed%8c%94%eb%a1%9c%eb%b4%87-v2-%ea%b3%b5/
- https://rainbow-robotics.com/%ed%97%8c%ec%9d%b8%ed%83%80%ec%9a%b4%ea%b0%9c%eb%b0%9c-%eb%a0%88%ec%9d%b8%eb%b3%b4%ec%9a%b0%eb%a1%9c%eb%b3%b4%ed%8b%b1%ec%8a%a4%ec%99%80-%ec%9d%b8%ea%b3%b5%ec%a7%80%eb%8a%a5-%eb%b3%b4%ec%95%88/
- https://rainbow-robotics.com/%ec%9d%b4%ec%9e%ac%ec%9a%a9-%ed%9a%8c%ec%9e%a5-%ec%82%bc%ec%84%b1%ec%9d%98-%eb%af%b8%eb%9e%98-pick-%ec%98%ac%ed%95%b4-%ec%9d%bc-%eb%82%b8%eb%8b%a4-%ed%9c%b4%eb%a8%b8%eb%85%b8%ec%9d%b4/
- https://www.bigtanews.co.kr/article/view/big202609030018
- http://www.metroseoul.co.kr/article/20260903500454
- http://www.opinionnews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=143974
- https://blog.naver.com/hehenews/224400076881
- https://blog.naver.com/recsy/224399892788
- http://www.newsian.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=94600
- http://www.finomy.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=260551
This article explains company filings and published figures for information only. It is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures can change after publication — check the original filings before making decisions.