Microsoft joins Cruise
Cruise Origin: Autonomous e-shuttle from GM subsidiary. (Image: General Motors)
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Microsoft is investing two million US dollars in the California self-driving startup Cruise. It is not the software manufacturer’s first investment in this area.
Microsoft also wants to participate in the business with self-driving cars. In addition, the Redmond group is investing around two billion dollars in a larger financing round in the Waymo competitor Cruise, which belongs to the General Motors car group. Both companies agreed that this was the case.
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Cruise is now worth $ 30 billion
In addition to Microsoft, the Japanese car manufacturer Honda and General Motors themselves also participated, but not the long-standing major investor Softbank. Cruise now has a market valuation of $ 30 billion.
In the aftermath of the Invest, Cruise will switch to Microsoft’s Connected vehicle platform switch to the Azure cloud. It has been used by Renault-Nissan since January 2017. Volkswagen has also been there since October 2018.
As The Verge reports, General Motors, with around 100,000 employees, is now switching from Google’s Workspace to Microsoft’s Office365.
The self-driving car market is very popular among technology companies. Google has been working on Cruise competitor Waymo since the noughties, Amazon has incorporated Zoox and Apple is working with Hyundai on a self-drive car.
Waymo as well as Zoox and Cruise now have government approvals to drive cars on public roads without a security driver at the wheel. Cruise wanted to start a Robotaxi service back in 2019, but was overtaken by the competition.
Up to now, Cruise only allows employees to ride in one of its autonomous taxis. Others – especially Waymo – are much further ahead. Cruise has not yet offered an updated start date for its taxi service.
