GM
- GM’s Cruise business has secured new funding, bringing the company’s value to $19 billion.
- The new round is $1.15 billion, and it comes from a group of institutional investors: GM, Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund, and Honda.
- Investment in Cruise now totals $7.25 billion.
Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous mobility business, keeps raking in the funding.
Following major investments last year from Japan’s SoftBank and Honda valuing the operation at nearly $15 billion, Cruise announced on Tuesday a new funding round of $1.15 billion that takes the business to a new valuation of $19 billion.
In a statement, Cruise said that the funding round is coming from a "group comprising institutional investors, including funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and existing partners General Motors, SoftBank Vision Fund and Honda."
GM acquired Cruise (then called Cruise Automation) in 2016, for an all-in price of $1 billion. The company has now brought in $7.25 billion in total investment, according to a statement.
Read more: GM Cruise plans to double in size by the end of 2019 and has hired a new exec to help it grow
In 2018, GM President Dan Ammann moved over to Cruise as its CEO, while co-founded Kyle Vogt shifted to a CTO role to guide the company’s expansion. Earlier this year, Cruise took over the former headquarters of Dropbox and announced plans to double its headcount in 2019.
"Developing and deploying self-driving vehicles at massive scale is the engineering challenge of our generation," Ammann said in a statement. "Having deep resources to draw on as we pursue our mission is a critical competitive advantage."
Cruise is in a race with Alphabet’s Waymo to bring automated rail-hailing services to customers. Ford’s ArgoAI is also chasing that goal, with a recent investment from Volkswagen, and Tesla has declared that it will have a million robotaxis on the road by 2020.
However, Cruise’s valuation is more specific than any of its competitors, and the company benefits from being part of the largest US automaker. San Francisco-based Cruise has been testing autonomous Chevy Bolt electric vehicles, with the goal of rolling out a commercial ride-hailing service this year.
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Matthew DeBord)