Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt resigns from GM-owned robotaxi unit
Cruise founder and CEO Kyle Vogt has resigned from his role at the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, according to a company statement sent to CNBC on Sunday.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt has resigned from his role at the autonomous vehicle venture owned by General Motors, according to a company statement sent to CNBC on Sunday.
Mo Elshenawy, who previously served as executive vice president of engineering at Cruise, will now serve as president and CTO for Cruise, the company said.
Vogt confirmed his resignation Sunday night in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He did not give a reason for the resignation, and said he plans “to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas.”
The departing CEO also offered words of encouragement, writing: “Cruise is still just getting started, and I believe it has a great future ahead. The folks at Cruise are brilliant, driven, and resilient. They’re executing on a solid, multi-year roadmap and an exciting product vision. I’m thrilled to see what Cruise has in store next!”
Vogt’s resignation follows a string of missteps by Cruise.
As CNBC previously reported, the company issued a voluntary recall affecting 950 of its robotaxis, and suspended all vehicle operations on public roads following a series of incidents that sparked criticism from first responders, labor activists and local elected officials, especially in San Francisco.
In one serious incident in October, the human driver of another vehicle struck a pedestrian in San Francisco at night, tossing her into the path of a Cruise self-driving car, which then drove over and dragged her.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s deployment and testing permits for its autonomous vehicles after that incident. “When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the regulators said in a statement at the time.
In orders of suspension the California DMV issued to Cruise, the regulators accused the company of failing to give a transparent account of what happened during the pedestrian collision.
Separately, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating Cruise to determine whether its automated driving systems “exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway,” according to a filing on the agency’s website.
GM purchased Cruise in 2016. It then brought on investors such as Honda Motor, Softbank Vision Fund and, more recently, Walmart and Microsoft. However, last year, GM acquired SoftBank’s equity ownership stake for $2.1 billion.
GM execs, including CEO and Chair Mary Barra, had hoped the startup would be ramping up a driverless transportation network this year, and hoped Cruise would play a notable role in doubling the company’s revenue by 2030.
In October 2021, GM said it expected “new businesses” such as Cruise and its BrightDrop commercial EV business to grow from $2 billion to $80 billion during that timeframe.
According to its most recent quarterly update, GM has lost roughly $1.9 billion on Cruise between January and September 2023, including $732 million in the third quarter alone.
Barra also serves as chair of the Cruise board of directors. Former Tesla and Lyft executive Jon McNeill, a member of GM’s board of directors since 2022, was appointed vice chairman of the self-driving unit’s board following Vogt’s resignation.
Alex Roy from transportation consultancy Johnson & Roy told CNBC, “Responsibility starts at the top. If Cruise is going to survive, and they have great technology there, the CEO had to go.”
“I suspect at least one more high level exec will have to resign — anyone who made the call to obfuscate or omit information in communication with the California DMV,” he said. “In my opinion, Cruise has been too slow in taking steps to rebuild trust with staff, regulators and the public. Executive departures are table stakes.”
Vogt’s resignation comes roughly two years after he was reappointed as CEO, following an unexpected departure by Dan Ammann, a former GM executive, in December 2021.
Ammann, a former investment banker, began leading Cruise in 2019 after serving as GM’s president and chief financial officer before that. He was credited with the 2016 acquisition of Cruise.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the GeekWire Summit in Seattle on Oct. 5, 2021.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon has discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.
The company had been working to launch a fertility monitoring device and companion smartphone app for the past four years as part of a project codenamed “Encore,” said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press. The team sat within Amazon’s Grand Challenge, also known as its Special Projects division, the sources said.
Last month, Amazon told people working on the tracker that it was disbanding the team. Those being laid off will remain on Amazon’s payroll until Dec. 27, but won’t be expected to work during that time, according to documents reviewed by CNBC.
If staffers don’t secure another job by that date, Amazon will provide them with a “lump sum” severance payment equal to one week of salary for every six months of tenure at the company, the documents said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been reeling in costs companywide since late 2022, when inflationary pressures and rising interest rates led to a slowdown across the tech and consumer markets. In addition to slashing more than 27,000 jobs, Jassy has shuttered several projects, ranging from a roving sidewalk robot to a telehealth offering and a rapid delivery service.
The wave of frugality marks a distinct departure from the approach taken by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Jassy’s predecessor, who was known for greenlighting experimental projects and giving employees extended runway to develop them, even if they burned cash along the way. Grand Challenge was one of the hallmarks of that era.
Bezos launched Grand Challenge in 2014 as a way for Amazon to tinker with riskier projects that may or may not see the light of day. Grand Challenge was the brains behind a pair of connected eyeglasses equipped with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant and a machine learning tool for analyzing medical records.
Other Grand Challenge projects, like the Amazon Care telehealth service, a video-calling device for kids, a virtual tours service and an augmented reality headset for meetings were discontinued.
On the morning of Oct. 28, employees working on the fertility tracker were told to join a videoconference where a director of the team informed them that the project was ending. The call lasted about two minutes, one of the people said.
A layoff notice viewed by CNBC was signed by Doug Weibel, who took over as the head of Grand Challenge after its founding leader, Babak Parviz, left in 2022 and joined Madrona Venture Group.
Margaret Callahan, an Amazon spokesperson, confirmed the layoffs and the existence of the project in a statement to CNBC. Roughly 100 employees will be laid off, Callahan confirmed.
“Following a recent review, we’ve decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge, and we’re working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon,” Callahan said.
Predicting fertility with saliva
The project was born out of the company’s 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said.
BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge following the purchase. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app.
Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius.
The team was working to develop its own saliva collection device and mobile app, which could predict when a user might be in the fertile window. Users could also log their period symptoms, sexual activity and other data to assist with tracking their fertility. There are similar offerings on the market from companies including Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, along with fertility and ovulation tracking apps like Flo, Clue and Max Levchin’s Glow.
Amazon initially aimed to release the product this year, but the timing was pushed out after the team encountered technical issues with the device, one of the people said. It was a costly endeavor and required significant upfront investments for lab research and development, in addition to the high salaries for scientists and engineers, the sources said, adding that the team’s weekly overhead was roughly $1.5 million. Amazon didn’t comment on the figure.
Only one project now remains active within Grand Challenge. Its focus is on health tech, the people said.
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