Driverless Car Startups Won’t Wait for Regulators to Take Action

Don’t be surprised if you see a self-driving car in San Francisco.

Cruise, the driverless car company, has received an additional $1.35 billion investment from SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund, the San Francisco company announced on its blog Tuesday (Feb. 1), outdistancing efforts to regulate autonomous vehicles.

“This additional capital will help us expand our world-class team and quickly scale this technology across San Francisco and into more communities,” Co-founder Kyle Vogt wrote.

The London-based venture capital fund initially invested $900 million in Cruise, a division of General Motors Co., in 2018.

“Over the past several weeks, Cruise employees have been taking rides every single night,” Vogt wrote. “Even our friends from GM came out and took a ride.”

Anyone in San Francisco can get a driverless ride soon and for free, he wrote. To sign up, go here .

Mary Barra , the CEO of General Motors, called her first driverless ride “surreal” and “a highlight of her career” as an engineer.

In 2016, Cruise, had 40 employees. Today, it more than 2,800 employees, according to the company’s LinkedIn profile .

Cruise’s announcement comes as Capitol Hill lawmakers were scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday (Feb. 2) on self-driving vehicles. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s “The Road Ahead for Automated Vehicles” was set for 11 a.m.

Last spring, PYMNTS reported Walmart invested in Cruise, as the retail giant considered the role of autonomous vehicles in the past few years, saying that it has “seen enough to know it’s no longer a question of if they’ll be scaled, but when.”

Read more: Walmart Backs Electric Vehicle Company Cruise

The investment in Cruise will help Walmart toward its goal of a last-mile delivery ecosystem that is “fast, low-cost and scalable,” the company said. Walmart has been working with Cruise since 2020 on a delivery pilot in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Walmart said its focus on delivery comes as eCommerce has become a staple in the lives of customers amid the pandemic. The retailer also cited Cruise’s fleet being powered by 100% renewable energy, which will help Walmart achieve its goal to achieve zero emissions by 2040 and to be fully powered by renewable energy by 2035.