Kyle Vogt, then president and CTO of Cruise, delivered a keynote on the 2019 Robotics Summit & Expo.
The Bot Firm — led by former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt — has raised $150 million in new funding, based on Reuters. Whereas the corporate has but to disclose a service robotic prototype, this newest funding places its valuation at $2 billion.
The most recent funding spherical consists of participation from Greenoaks, a San Francisco-based world funding agency. Its earlier funding was led by Nat Friedman, a California-based investor; Daniel Gross, an angel investor in companies like SpaceX, Stripe, and Instacart; and Nabeel Hyatt, a basic companion at Spark Capital. It additionally included participation from Quiet Capital, Patrick Collison, John Collison, Elad Gil, Fifty Years, and extra.
It has been over a yr since Vogt publicly launched The Bot Firm with $150 million already raised. Paril Jain, chief expertise officer and former tech lead and AI supervisor at Tesla, is a co-founder of the firm. Luke Holoubek, an engineer at The Bot Firm, is the previous technical advisor to the CTO at self-driving automotive developer Cruise.
Vogt has fundraising, AV expertise
Vogt is not any stranger to technical and enterprise challenges. He began Cruise in 2013 with Dan Kan. Common Motors acquired Cruise for $1 billion in 2016. In November 2023, Vogt left Cruise, saying his plans embrace spending time with household and “exploring new concepts.”
The resignation got here after a tough few weeks for Cruise. In October 2023, California’s Division of Motor Automobiles (DMV) suspended Cruise’s autonomous automobile (AV) deployment and driverless testing permits. The DMV mentioned it suspended the permits as a result of of a string of incidents, saying the corporate “misrepresented” the protection of its robotaxis. Extra just lately, GM formally stopped funding Cruise’s robotaxi deployments.
Vogt’s expertise with funding firms didn’t begin with Cruise. He was a co-founder of Justin.television, ultimately the father or mother firm of Twitch.television. In 2014, Amazon bought Twitch for $970 million.
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The Bot Firm hopes to automate mundane chores
The Bot Firm goals to create house robots that can help folks with on a regular basis duties. The San Francisco-based startup has remained tight-lipped about what its system will seem like or what capabilities it is going to have, however Reuters mentioned sources indicated that it’s engaged on a non-humanoid robotic outfitted with a base and grips.
The Bot Firm mentioned it’s specializing in automating family chores so folks have extra time for significant pursuits. Nonetheless, family robotics is a notoriously difficult section of the robotics market. Not like in industrial settings, builders of house robots haven’t any certainty in regards to the circumstances their robots should function in.
Different house robotic builders embrace 1X Applied sciences, which just lately unveiled the NEO Gamma humanoid because it prepares for pilot deployments in choose houses. On the non-humanoid facet of issues, Howdy Robotic presently affords Stretch 3, a cell manipulator to assist disabled folks achieve independence of their houses.
The Bot Firm mentioned the newest funding spherical will assist it construct out the {hardware} and synthetic intelligence for its family robots. The Robotic Report reached out to the corporate for extra particulars however didn’t hear again as of press time.
