Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous car division, announced it received a $1.15B investment in its latest funding round. This investment raised Cruise’s valuation to $19 billion.
The investment was received from existing investors of the company. The investors were specified as GM, SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. Including this recent investment, Cruise has now received $7.25 billion in investments in the past year, including money from GM. The news of Cruise’s funding come soon after Uber announced a $1 billion investment for its self-driving car efforts.
General Motors acquired Cruise in 2019 for $1 billion, significantly less than the unit’s current valuation of $19 billion. Since then, General Motors has gained a leading role in the industry of self-driving cars.
“Developing and deploying self-driving vehicles at massive scale is the engineering challenge of our generation,” said Cruise CEO Dan Ammann. “Having deep resources to draw on as we pursue our mission is a critical competitive advantage.”
General Motors plans on expanding Cruise’s workforce to 1,000 workers in 2019. The company also expressed plans of spending up to $1 billion on its autonomous vehicles efforts. In its last quarter alone, Cruise spent roughly $200 million. Cruise’s $19 billion valuation now represents over one-third of its parent company GM’s market value. General Motors’ stock is up around 25% in 2019.