Deng Simiao, Lei Gang, sent from the Copilot Temple.
Reference for intelligent vehicles | AI4Auto public account
Round and round, the helm of the world’s top three autonomous driving companies ultimately returns to the hands of the founding technical team.
This was the case for Baidu’s autonomous driving in 2017.
It was the case for Waymo’s autonomous vehicles in 2021.
And just recently, it was also the case for General Motors’ Cruise in 2022.
Kyle Vogt announced that he will once again serve as CEO of Cruise.
At the same time, he will also continue to serve as president and CTO.
This also means that the helm of Cruise is now back in the hands of the founding technical team.
The background of the CEO’s presence and departure
Who is Cruise?
Founded in 2013, it is globally recognized as the fastest-growing autonomous driving startup, and in 2016, it was fully acquired by General Motors for $581 million, becoming the trigger for various automakers’ “autonomous driving anxiety,” directly or indirectly leading to the era of autonomous driving startups being snatched up.
After the acquisition by General Motors, Cruise began its internal integration period, and a CEO from a car company background came along.
Dan Ammann, former CFO and President of General Motors, became CEO of Cruise in 2018.
Thereafter, Cruise’s development began to show more of its “capital-driven” side.
In June 2018, after a series of flirtations with SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, General Motors staged a play of “merger and re-spinoff” with Cruise, reintroducing other external investors.
Masayoshi Son used SoftBank Vision Fund to directly invest $2.25 billion, allowing Cruise’s post-investment valuation to exceed $11.5 billion, making it the world’s most expensive “autonomous driving startup.”
Masayoshi Son also continued his style and quickly brought in Japanese automaker Honda, boosting Cruise’s valuation to $19 billion and setting a schedule for commercialization and IPO.
After that, the money-grabbing road continued. Just last year, under Microsoft’s lead investment, Cruise received another $2 billion in new financing, pushing its valuation to $30 billion, on par with Waymo and Baidu Apollo as the world’s top three autonomous driving companies.And with a whopping $4.25 billion in cash on hand, Cruise has become one of the world’s most well-funded autonomous driving companies, which undoubtedly has a close correlation with its CEO Dan Ammann’s financial and automotive background.
However, corresponding to the progress in capital fundraising, the landing of Cruise’s technology has once again been delayed.
Cruise had initially announced its plan to launch its RoboTaxi in San Francisco and allow citizens to hail a ride in 2019, but this plan has been postponed many times.
While the unexpected outbreak of the pandemic is one reason for the delays, it may also have something to do with the technical progress, as other Chinese players such as Baidu, WeRide, and Pony.ai, who are also landing RoboTaxis, have made much smoother progress.
Even Waymo has migrated from Phoenix to land in San Francisco, but Cruise is still not fulfilling its promises.
Along the way, Cruise has had shining moments, such as launching the Cruise Origin, a completely redesigned self-driving prototype vehicle without a steering wheel, but it is still in the prototype stage.
Perhaps it is responsible for this situation and result, or perhaps it is due to the media’s exposure of “discord” between Ammann and Mary Barra, the current CEO of General Motors…
Ammann suddenly resigned in December 2021.
Founding Technologists Take the Helm Again
Apparently, General Motors was unprepared for Ammann’s departure.
During the analyst conference call, CEO Mary Barra confidently said that they would “find” an exceptional CEO for Cruise, because Cruise is a very special company.
However, they never thought that after searching high and low, they would eventually “find” Kyle Vogt.
Who is Kyle Vogt?
He is Cruise’s founder, former CEO, current President, and CTO.
Kyle is a pure technology engineer by training. He has had an interest in autonomous driving since his teenage years in the United States.
In 2004, he was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and began studying computer and electrical engineering, participating in the DARPA competition that later changed the course of autonomous driving.
Kyle is also a successful serial entrepreneur.Kyle has founded three companies, Socialcam, Justin.tv, and Twitch, with Twitch being the most successful one, acquired by Amazon for $1.1 billion.
Later in October 2013, Kyle co-founded Cruise in San Francisco, focusing on the great prospects of autonomous driving and self-driving cars, and became one of the most notable innovation companies.
Three years later, Cruise accepted General Motors’ acquisition proposal and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of GM.
At the time, GM promised to give Cruise full independence to promote technology and commercialization independently, while leveraging GM’s plant experience and resources to accelerate progress.
However, the working mode and innovation of a large company are different from those of a startup.
Kyle himself admitted that things were not smooth sailing after the acquisition.
After entering the giant GM, it took Cruise employees 6 months to 1 year to truly find a harmonious and cooperative rhythm.
Later, GM sent Dan Ammann to take over as CEO of Cruise.
It is still unknown whether this change was Kyle’s initiative or the result of GM’s integration and governance.
But from the current situation, the progress of Cruise in technology and landing cannot be unrelated to the person in charge and CEO.
After all, autonomous driving is still a technology that requires continuous exploration and promotion, and has not yet reached the mature stage of large-scale landing and commercialization.
Dan Ammann may be well-versed in capital and may have plant resources, but a manager of an autonomous driving company cannot be without technical vision and corresponding abilities.
Finally, the change of CEO at Cruise can also be regarded as a result of the resurgence of the tech faction.
Because this transition has also been completed by other peer self-driving powerhouses.
The most recent one is Waymo.
In April 2021, John Krafcik, the former CEO of Hyundai Motor America, announced his departure after leading Waymo for five and a half years.
As a CEO who came in from outside, during John Krafcik’s tenure, Waymo achieved independent spin-off, financing, and development, and launched the RoboTaxi operating mode product, Waymo One.But it was his arrival that directly led to the departure of the founder and core engineering team of the Google self-driving car pioneer, Ericsson, and its core engineering team, to start their own business.
Similar to today’s Cruise, Waymo, which has appointed founder member and CTO Dmitri Dolgov as its new leader since John Krafcik resigned, has the meaning of correcting the wrongs.
What’s more interesting is that Waymo, Cruise, and Baidu Apollo, the top three global self-driving technology leaders, have all completed this change of power by the technical team.
Moreover, it was Baidu that put autonomous driving back on track after this correction in early 2017.
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This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.