Blackstone agrees to invest in South Korea’s actuator supplier Futronic

$1.3 trillion U.S. asset manager Blackstone has agreed to invest in South Korea’s supplier of high-precision actuators, Futronic. 

Blackstone said Monday private equity funds affiliated with the company entered a definitive agreement to “make a significant investment” in Futronic. 

The firm didn’t disclose the size of the investment. However, the deal values the South Korean company at 1 ​trillion won ($676.04 million), according to people familiar with the agreement. 

Futronic has operations in the United States and Korea. The company makes high-precision actuators used in cars, including humanoids and other robots. 

Actuators are the components that convert a control signal into physical motion, the parts that let a robot arm move, or a car system adjust.

The agreement was reached in partnership with Futronic founder Jin-ho Ko, who will be retained as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, according to the announcement. 

The founder said Blackston would “help drive our expansion and solidify our leadership in actuation and motion control solutions.”

Blackstone positions for the robotics boom

Blackstone’s investment in Futronic comes as the global actuator market experiences rapid growth.

The global industrial actuator market was estimated at $30.4 billion last year, according to Global Market Insights. It’s expected to hit $32.5 billion in 2026 and double to $67.7 billion in 2035, driven by rising automation and robotics.

“Humanoids and broader automation are still in the early innings of exponential growth,” said Kyungmin Song, Principal, Blackstone Private Equity, adding that “we believe FUTRONIC’s motion control solutions will be an important enabler of this megatrend.”

Song mentioned that the convergence of AI and the physical world is a “key investment theme” for Blackstone’s Private Equity. 

In May, the firm agreed to put $5 billion into a joint AI cloud company with Google. 

Cryptopolitan reported that both companies intend to build 500 megawatts of computing capacity by 2027, with plans to scale beyond that.

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