Shawnee native sells another startup for over $1B with GM deal
March 21, 2016 | Bobby Burch
General Motors is hoping to become the leader of self-driving car technology with the gargantuan acquisition of Cruise Automation, whose founder has a local tie.
GM announced on March 11 that it purchased Cruise for more than $1 billion in a move that aims to accelerate the development of GM’s autonomous vehicle tech. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt is a 2004 graduate of Shawnee Mission Northwest High School.
“GM’s commitment to autonomous vehicles is inspiring, deliberate and completely in line with our vision to make transportation safer and more accessible,” Vogt said in a release. “We are excited to be partnering with GM and believe this is a ground-breaking and necessary step toward rapidly commercializing autonomous vehicle technology.”
Cruise created an aftermarket kit that allows users to convert certain types of cars into autonomous vehicles for highway driving. Fortune Magazine reports that about 40 people work for Cruise. The company raised more than $18 million in venture capital funding, and its investors include Y Combinator, Spark Capital, Maven Ventures and Founder Collective.
As part of the deal, Cruise will operate as an independent unit within GM’s recently-formed autonomous vehicle team. The company will continue to be based in San Francisco. GM already works with ride-sharing company Lyft and formed a personal mobility brand for car-sharing fleets named Maven.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vogt now has two billion-dollar deals under his belt. In 2006, he helped build and launch Twitch, which is self-described “the ESPN for gaming.” In 2013, Amazon acquired the firm for $1.1 billion. He also was a co-founder of SocialCam, a mobile app for video sharing. In 2011, he sold the firm to Autodesk for $60 million.
To learn more about Cruise’s technology, check out the video below.
Featured Business
2016 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
Earworms to the Oscars: They’ve redefined jingle writing, now composing music for motion (pictures)
Notes of passion are composed throughout every piece of Sam Billen’s entrepreneurial melody. But it’s the most recent crescendo in his career that has him thanking the Academy. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s actually pretty cool,” said Billen, composer and founding partner of Primary Color Music, detailing the experience of guests who step foot inside…
Innovators can’t do it alone; C3KC conference calls for cross-sector attack on wealth gap, KC’s biggest pain points
Editor’s note: Startland News is a media sponsor for the Junior League of Kansas City’s C3KC conference. Click here for tickets to the event, which features a keynote address by best-selling author Adam Grant. Challenges abound in Kansas City, Kimberlee Ried acknowledged, but opportunities for innovation to push change are even more plentiful. An in-person conference…
Roll over, Wordle: Tabletop golf, cocktail bar tee’d up as KC’s next big game experience with Power and Light opening
Sinkers Lounge is reinventing mini golf in the same way Top Golf reinvented the driving range, said Matt Baysinger. “With all the ideas we have in our heads about what mini golf is, I think Sinkers Lounge will far surpass that. Tabletop golf is this combination of shuffleboard, mini golf and pool that doesn’t quite…
KC filmmaker’s docu-series tackles mental health stigmas with assist from former Chiefs
The brand of freedom sold to viewers of one of the nation’s most-watched cable news networks doesn’t reflect the kind Abraham Sisay has come to know, he declared, looking back on his journey from rising Gambian soccer star to Kansas City filmmaker and how it revealed the true definition of the word. “Fox News was…