EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
GM’s Cruise acquires Voyage, a self-driving car startup that focuses on retirement communities
General Motor Co.’s majority-owned autonomous vehicle company Cruise LLC said today it has acquired self-driving car startup Voyage Auto Inc. for an undisclosed price.
Founded in 2017, Palo Alto, California-based Voyage focuses on developing self-driving car technology to “supercharge” communities, especially retirement communities. The company’s technology is retrofitted onto existing vehicles, which are then deployed to transport community residents.
“Many residents within our communities don’t have access to transportation options that work for them,” a spokesperson for Voyage told SiliconANGLE when the company raised $31 million in funding in 2019. “Our first driverless product (with no test driver) aims to ensure there’s always a viable option to move around independently within a community. We begin with a self-driving car that can travel point-to-point within our communities at speeds up to 25 miles per hour.”
Nearly two years and a global pandemic later, Voyage has continued forward on its niche path in focusing on retirement communities. In a post on Medium, Voyage Vice President of Product Oliver Cameron said the company’s approach has been to leverage its limited resources to deliver a product that restores mobility to those who need it most: senior citizens.
“We’ve made tremendous progress towards this goal, moving countless senior citizens (some as old as 92!) around their communities,” Cameron said. “Now at Cruise, we are thrilled to have the substantial resources to eventually serve not just senior citizens but every possible demographic who stands to benefit from self-driving services.”
The deal marks ongoing consolidation in the autonomous vehicle market as some companies surge ahead of others in bringing the technology to market. In one of the largest such deals, Uber Technologies Inc. sold its self-driving car unit, formally known as the Advanced Technologies Group, to Amazon.com Inc.-backed autonomous vehicle startup Aurora Innovation Inc. in December for a price reported to be $4 billion.
Cruise, which started as a project at GM, was spun out as a separate company and raised more than $2 billion from investors including Microsoft Corp., Honda Motor Co. Ltd. and others in January.
Alongside industry leader Waymo LLC, Cruise has been near the forefront of successful development of autonomous vehicle technology although it is arguably a few years behind the company formerly known as the Google Car Project. Cruise had planned to launch an autonomous taxi service in 2019 but was forced to delay those plans. The company also debuted a self-driving van with no steering wheel or pedals in January 2020.
Prior to its acquisition, Voyage had raised $52 million in venture capital funding from investors including Franklin Templeton, Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, CRV and Amino Capital.
Photo: Voyage
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