DEPLOYDatabase

Company

Cruise

Autonomous vehicle company founded 2013, acquired by General Motors in 2016; operated as a largely autonomous GM subsidiary building driverless robotaxis.

Founded
2013
HQ
San Francisco, California, USA
Status
GM subsidiary (robotaxi ops wound down Dec 2024)

The verified answer

As of Aug 2026, DEPLOY verifies Cruise: 2 models, 7 deployments across 6 regions, 14 active incidents. 18 sources back the record.

Regulatory status1 Regulatory filing1 NHTSA recall1 NHTSA investigation

Cruise has 1 Regulatory filing pending and has 1 NHTSA recall and 1 NHTSA investigation on record, per the DEPLOY registry.

See all 4 filings

CategoryRobotaxis

Overview

Autonomous vehicle company founded 2013, acquired by General Motors in 2016; operated as a largely autonomous GM subsidiary building driverless robotaxis. Launched driverless (no safety driver) taxi service in San Francisco (first driverless ride Nov 2021; open to public Feb 2022). Following the Oct 2, 2023 pedestrian-dragging incident and subsequent regulatory fallout, suspended all operations Oct 2023; CEO/co-founder Kyle Vogt resigned Nov 2023.

Began returning vehicles to public roads (with human safety drivers) May 2024. In December 2024, GM stopped funding Cruise's robotaxi business, folding the autonomous-driving work into driver-assistance systems for personal GM vehicles. The driverless-robotaxi business is effectively ended.

Verified record

Verified deployments
7 deployments on file
Active incidents
14 incidents on file

Valuation of record

DEPLOY VERIFIED
$1B (reported, approximate)as of May 2016

AcquisitionAcquired by General Motors

See the full valuations ranking →

Key facts

Status

Robotaxi service ENDED, GM defunded Dec 2024

Owner

General Motors (with prior Honda investment)

Investment history

Honda committed $2.75B; GM invested billions before defunding

Defining event

SF pedestrian-dragging, Oct 2, 2023

Regulatory outcome

CA DMV/CPUC permit suspension; nationwide driverless halt

Vehicle

Cruise AV (Chevy Bolt), reached commercial maturity

GM defunding (Dec 2024)

On Dec 10, 2024 GM announced it will no longer fund Cruise's robotaxi development, combining Cruise LLC and GM technical teams into a single autonomous/assisted-driving effort (Super Cruise)

GM restructuring savings

GM expects to lower spending by more than US$1B annually after the Cruise restructuring (per Dec 10, 2024 release)

SF operations halted

Robotaxi service halted in San Francisco — depot and fleet operations wound down (late 2024)

Bay Area layoffs

101 Bay Area jobs cut; contract workers from fleet operations laid off; CEO and top executives departed (verified)

Contradiction signal

Announced nationwide expansion (2023) contradicted by complete depot closure and fleet wind-down (2024) — textbook corridor signal

Data & sources

Company filings

1

Press releases

1

News coverage

2

Patent documents

8

Web sources

6

18 sources backing this record.View all →

Relationships

Claims ledger

Public, dated claims by Cruise, each tracked against the evidence. Status is a DEPLOY assessment from primary sources: verified means an independent source confirms it; contradicted means one refutes it; open means the outcome is not yet determinable. Every entry keeps its verbatim quote and source so you can check the call yourself.

Claim Integrity: 0% (0 of 3 resolved claims verified; 3 tracked)
  • ContradictedTimeline · claimed 2024-01-01 · deadline 2026-12-31
    There should be major coverage in the US by end of 2026

    Cruise was effectively dissolved by GM in late 2024. Kyle Vogt is no longer CEO. There will be no "major coverage" from Cruise in 2026. The company as an independent entity no longer exists in its original form.

  • ContradictedTimeline · claimed 2023-10-01 · deadline 2024-12-31
    Cruise is on track for — if not ahead of — commercial deployment

    Cruise was not commercially deployed by end of 2024. Operations suspended Oct 2023 after pedestrian-dragging incident. GM restructured Cruise, laid off staff.

  • ContradictedCapacity · claimed 2019-11-07 · deadline 2020-12-31
    By end of 2020 we want to have 1M cars on the road with HW3 ready for RoboTaxi

    Cruise never reached 1M robotaxis. Commercial robotaxi service was limited to SF; GM recalled all Cruise AVs in Nov 2023 after safety incidents.

Disagree with a status? Cruise can submit a correction with evidence and we log the response on the record. Methodology and the full industry ledger live at /stats/claim-integrity.

Explainers

Plain-language answers to the questions people ask about Cruise, from DEPLOY’s explainer library. Each is written in the language of the question and cross-checked against this registry.

What is Zoox and how does it compare to other robotaxi operators?
Zoox is an Amazon-owned autonomous-vehicle company headquartered in Foster City, California. Unlike Waymo (retrofit Jaguar I-PACE) or Tesla Robotaxi (retrofit Model Y), Zoox is the only major US robotaxi operator deploying a purpose-built bidirectional vehicle with no steering wheel or driver position. Zoox launched a free public demo robotaxi service on the Las Vegas Strip and in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood in 2025 and operates an employee shuttle program at its Foster City headquarters. Paid commercial service was planned for 2026 pending federal approval; current public rides remain free as of mid-2026.Read the full explainer →
What is Aurora and how does its autonomous trucking work?
Aurora Innovation is a US autonomous-vehicle company exclusively focused on commercial Class 8 trucking. Aurora launched commercial driverless trucking service between Dallas and Houston in April 2024 with freight customers including Werner Enterprises, Hirschbach Motor Lines, and Schneider. The company was founded by Chris Urmson (Google self-driving alumni) with Sterling Anderson and Drew Bagnell; it is a publicly-traded NASDAQ company following a 2021 SPAC merger.Read the full explainer →
What are the main Chinese robotaxi companies (Baidu Apollo Go, Pony AI, WeRide) and how do they compare to US operators?
Three Chinese autonomous-vehicle operators run commercial robotaxi services at substantially larger scale than US peers: Baidu Apollo Go (commercial robotaxi in Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and additional cities); Pony AI (commercial services in Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shenzhen; NYSE-listed November 2024); and WeRide (commercial fleet in China plus international deployments in Abu Dhabi and Singapore). The Chinese commercial AV cluster operates at higher trip volumes, lower per-ride pricing, and broader city coverage than US peers including Waymo.Read the full explainer →
Which is safer, Waymo or Tesla Robotaxi?
Waymo has the substantively stronger verified safety record in 2026: multi-year operational data across roughly 11 US metropolitan markets, published annual safety reports with per-million-miles accident-rate metrics, third-party actuarial validation (Swiss Re), and accident rates substantively below human-driver baselines for comparable urban environments. Tesla Robotaxi has a much shorter operational history (pilot launched June 2025 across 4 markets: Austin lead, Dallas, Houston, SF Bay Area), thinner published safety analysis, and operates an unrelated safety-data context from Tesla Autopilot. The comparison is asymmetric because the operational scales are asymmetric, not because Tesla Robotaxi has demonstrated safety problems at pilot scale.Read the full explainer →
How safe is Tesla Robotaxi?
Tesla Robotaxi's Austin pilot launched in June 2025 and has accumulated roughly 12 months of operational history as of mid-2026, with subsequent expansion to Dallas, Houston, and SF Bay Area for a 4-market pilot footprint. The published per-mile safety statistics are thinner than Waymo's multi-year operational baseline; no fatal Tesla Robotaxi crashes have been verified at the pilot scope. The honest framing is asymmetric data: Tesla Robotaxi's safety record is verifiable at the pilot scale that exists, but the depth is not yet at the level of Waymo's published annual safety reports with third-party actuarial validation. Pilot-stage data is not the same as commercial-scale data.Read the full explainer →

Founders (2)

  • Kyle Vogtcofounderfounded 2013-01-01no longer at company
  • Daniel Kancofounderfounded 2013-01-01no longer at company

See all founders across the registry →

Former / Previously (10)

  • Luke Holoubek Technical Advisor to the CTOsecondary-verified
  • Rob Flenniken AV fleet softwaresecondary-verified
  • Dennis Jackson Embedded AV software leadsecondary-verified
  • Colin Webb Autonomous Vehicle Engineersecondary-verified
  • Kyle Vogt Founder & former CEO, Co-Founder, CEOsecondary-verified
  • Daniel Kan Co-founder & former CPO, Co-Founder, CPOsecondary-verified
  • Marc Whitten CEO (2024-2025)secondary-verified
  • Mo Elshenawy President & CTO (former)secondary-verified
  • Liu Xianming Researcher (former)reported, not verified
  • Mohi Khansari Technical Lead (motion planning / robot learning)secondary-verified

Safety record

7 recalls and 7 incidents on record (2 critical, 3 serious, 4 moderate). Most recent: Nov 2024.

critical
2
serious
3
moderate
4
Severity not classified
5
recall
7
regulatory action
3
traffic disruption
2
injury
1
collision
1

Most recent: Nov 2024

Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Full safety record: incidents, sourcing, and exposure data →

Incidents affecting Cruise (14)

Includes incidents linked directly to this company, to its models, or to deployments of its models or under its operation. Retracted incidents are excluded from this view but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.

Operator customers (1)

Recent coverage

Cruise in third-party press

Peer companies