Microsoft Joins GM And Honda to Invest More Than $2 Billion in AV Group Cruise

Cruise Car In San Francisco Streets

Special To The Auto Channel
By Adrian Smith
Auto Futures

Microsoft will join General Motors, Honda and institutional investors in a combined new equity investment of more than $2 billion in AV group Cruise. This brings the valuation of Cruise to $30 billion.

Cruise and General Motors have also announced a new long-term strategic relationship with Microsoft to accelerate the commercialization of self-driving vehicles. The companies will bring together their software and hardware engineering excellence, cloud computing capabilities, manufacturing know-how and partner ecosystem to help transform transportation.

Cruise says it will leverage Azure, Microsoft’s cloud and edge computing platform, to commercialize its unique autonomous vehicle solutions at scale.

Cruise CEO Dan Ammann, says: “Our mission to bring safer, better and more affordable transportation to everyone isn’t just a tech race – it’s also a trust race. Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratization of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialize our fleet of self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles.”

GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra, adds: “Microsoft will help us accelerate the commercialization of Cruise’s all-electric, self-driving vehicles and help GM realize even more benefits from cloud computing as we launch 30 new electric vehicles globally by 2025 and create new businesses and services to drive growth.”

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, comments: “Advances in digital technology are redefining every aspect of our work and life, including how we move people and goods. As Cruise and GM’s preferred cloud, we will apply the power of Azure to help them scale and make autonomous transportation mainstream.”

GM says it will also work with Microsoft as its preferred public cloud provider to accelerate its digitization initiatives, including collaboration, storage, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.