The autonomous subsidiary of General Motors, Cruise, has announced it will acquire self-driving startup Voyage.
Voyage had been operating self-driving prototypes in retirement communities. Cruise spokesman Ray Wert declined to comment on the cost of the deal.
“Voyage is tightly aligned to our mission, and shares our mindset around safety, accessibility, cost and convenience for customer,” Wert told CNBC in an email. “Their talented team is highly productive and resourceful, with direct experience in developing a full-stack AV solution that will help accelerate our efforts to build the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles.”
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Most of Voyage’s 60 employees are expected to join Cruise as the company continues to test its self-driving vehicles on public roads and gears up to establish a robotaxi service in San Francisco.
Cruise’s decision to acquire Voyage marks just the latest example of consolidation within the autonomous vehicle sector. For example, Amazon recently purchased Zoox, Apple acquired drive.ai, and Uber sold its entire self-driving division to Aurora.
Cruise itself was acquired by General Motors in 2016 and currently operates more than 200 test vehicles. It has also received investment from the likes of Honda, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Microsoft.
In January, Honda announced that General Motors and Cruise will assist it in developing a self-driving mobility service in Japan. Current plans call for Cruise to send self-driving test vehicles to Japan later this year. Honda’s self-driving mobility service will ultimately use the Cruise Origin when it launches.
