Autonomous driving specialist Cruise has secured $1.35 billion in additional capital from SoftBank Vision Fund.
SoftBank originally invested $900 million in the General Motors’-owned autonomous driving unit in 2018, agreeing at the time to invest further once Cruise began operating “fully driverless cars.”
Kyle Vogt, the company’s co-founder, CTO and CEO, says: “I’m pleased to announce we’ve officially hit that milestone. This additional capital will help us expand our world-class team and quickly scale this technology across SF and into more communities.”
In the same announcement, Vogt says Cruise is opening up its driverless cars to the public in San Francisco.
In April 2021, Cruise received a $750 million investment adding to a previous Microsoft-led $2 billion round announced in January.
Founded in 2013, Cruise was acquired by GM in 2016 and received an investment of $3.35 billion from SoftBank and GM as well as $750 million from Honda in 2018
The rounds were followed by an investment of $1.15 billion led by T. Rowe Price in 2019.