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 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.
The company rolled out the Meta AI app in April, putting it in direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the tool has recently garnered some negative publicity and sparked privacy concerns over some of the wacky — and personal — prompts being shared publicly from user accounts.
Besides the mud wrestlers and Trump eating poop, some of the examples CNBC found include a user prompting Meta’s AI tool to generate photos of the character Hello Kitty “tying a rope in a loop hanging from a barn rafter, standing on a stool.” Another user whose prompt was posted publicly asked Meta AI to send what appears to be a veterinarian bill to another person.
“sir, your home address is listed on there,” a user commented on the photo of the veterinarian bill.
Prompts put into the Meta AI tool appear to show up publicly on the app by default, but users can adjust settings on the app to protect their privacy.
Here’s how to do it:
To start, click on your profile photo on the top right corner of the screen and scroll down to data and privacy. Then head to the “suggesting your prompts on other apps” tab. This should include Facebook and Instagram. Once there, click the toggle feature for the apps that you want to keep your prompts from being shared on.
After, go back to the main data and privacy page and click “manage your information.” Select “make all your public prompts visible only to you” and click the “apply to all” function. You can also delete your prompt history there.
Meta has beefed up its recent bets on AI to improve its offerings to compete against megacap peers and leading AI contenders, such as Google and OpenAI. This week the company invested $14 billion in startup Scale AI and tapped its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead the company’s AI strategy.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A One Medical clinic location is pictured in Emeryville, California on February 16, 2024.
Loren Elliott | The Washington Post | Getty Images
For the better part of a decade, Amazon has been trying to carve it’s way into the U.S. health-care market, through billions of dollars worth of acquisitions, big-name hires and high-profile partnerships. It’s been a slog at times, and the company’s long-term strategy hasn’t always been clear.
Following a series of executive departures, Amazon is now restructuring its health business, telling CNBC that Amazon Health Services will be divided into six new units, with a goal of creating a simpler structure.
As part of the effort, the company has tapped a number of longtime Amazon leaders and elevated some One Medical executives to oversee the divisions. Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services told CNBC in an interview that the company has been working on the overhaul for the past several months.
“Our leadership team has been focused on simplifying our structure to move faster and continue to innovate effectively,” Lindsay said in a video chat. “One of the problems we’re trying to solve is the fragmented experience for patients and customers that’s common in healthcare.”
Amazon said it hasn’t conducted broad layoffs as part of the changes.
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The reorganization comes after Amazon lost several senior health leaders in recent months. Dr. Vin Gupta, who joined in 2020 and served as chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy, left in February, followed by Trent Green, whose last day as CEO of Amazon’s primary care chain One Medical was in April.
Aaron Martin, vice president of health care at Amazon, announced internally last month that he plans to leave his role. Dr. Sunita Mishra, Amazon’s chief medical officer, also departed in May.
Mishra and Martin’s departures have not been previously reported, and neither responded to requests for comment. Amazon doesn’t plan on naming a new CEO of One Medical following Green’s departure.
Martin, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, said in a memo to staffers that he’ll remain at Amazon “for a while” to help with the transition.
“I then plan to take some time off this summer and hang out with my wife and my kids, finally get a cover band going in Nashville, and then possibly do something new,” Martin wrote in the memo, which was shared with CNBC.
Ambitious efforts
Amazon has for years been on a mission to crack the multitrillion-dollar U.S. health-care industry, which is notoriously complex and inefficient.
While it had long served providers and others in health care with its cloud-based technology, Amazon’s first big splash directly into the market came in 2018 with the the acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack for about $750 million. Two years later, it launched its own offering called Amazon Pharmacy.
The company then bought One Medical for $3.9 billion in 2023, among its largest acquisitions ever, giving Amazon access to a chain of brick-and-mortar primary care clinics and a robust membership base.
There have been some major setbacks. The company shuttered its telehealth service, Amazon Care, in 2022. That came a year after it disbanded Haven, the joint health-care venture between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. The announcement of Haven in 2018 sent shockwaves through the medical world, pushing down shares of health-care companies on fears about how the combined muscle of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system.
In the areas where Amazon continues to operate, competition is fierce and, in the case of primary care, margins are very slim.
PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen, who left Amazon in 2022, recently launched a new health-care marketplace called General Medicine that will compete with Amazon. Mishra confirmed to STAT News that she advised the nascent startup. Amazon declined to comment on whether Mishra’s involvement with General Medicine was related to her departure.
Lindsay characterized the recent departures as part of the natural evolution of Amazon’s health business. He added that there’s “no shortage of depth of talent” within his organization.
“We’re a fast-evolving organization because the opportunity is so big,” Lindsay said.
Under its new structure, Amazon Health Services will be focused around the six groups, or what the company calls “pillars.”
One Medical Clinical Care Delivery, led by Dr. Andrew Diamond
One Medical Clinical Operations and Performance, led by Suzanne Hansen
AHS Strategic Growth and Network Development, led by John Singerling
AHS Store, Tech and Marketing, led by Prakash Bulusu
AHS Compliance, led by Kim Otte
AHS Pharmacy Services, led by John Love
Amazon declined to share financial figures for its health business, but Lindsay said it is seeing “very strong growth” across the offerings.
One Medical went public in 2020, and it was still losing money when it was bought by Amazon. At the end of 2022 in its last quarter as a standalone entity, it reported a net loss of $101.1 million on revenue of $272.4 million.
Since joining Amazon, One Medical has been working to open new offices in states including New Jersey, New York and Ohio.
Amazon said in January of 2024 that its pharmacy business “doubled the number of customers” it served in the past year, though it didn’t share specific figures. The company is opening pharmacies in 20 new cities this year, and about 45% of U.S. customers will be eligible for same-day medication delivery.
“If we can make one thing a little bit easier for a lot of people, we’ll save them a lot of time, a lot of money, and some lives,” Lindsay said. “And if we stack these changes up over time, it’ll feel like a reinvention.”
The electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, or eVTOL, company said Thursday it plans to use the financing to support new infrastructure and the rollout of an artificial intelligence-based aviation software platform. The money will also support its Launch Edition program, including an official partnership to provide air taxi services during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Archer said the funding round included the sale of 85 million shares at $10 apiece and gives the company a pro forma liquidity position of roughly $2 billion.
“We now have the strongest balance sheet in the sector and the resources we need to execute both here in the U.S. and abroad,” said founder and CEO Adam Goldstein in a release. “Archer’s future couldn’t be any brighter.”
The stock offering comes after President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that created a pilot program to support developing and deploying more eVTOL vehicles in the U.S. Shares of both Archer and competitor Joby Aviation rallied this week on the heels of the news.
Demand for eVTOL companies has ballooned in recent years as developers tout the technology’s ability to reduce emissions and cut down traffic congestion. The technology faces numerous regulatory and safety hurdles in the process.
Archer has already partnered with United Airlines to roll out an airport air taxi service. Last month, competitor Joby Aviation said it received the first $250 million from a $500 million contract with carmaker Toyota to support certifying and producing eVTOLs.
Archer is slated to display its Midnight eVTOL aircraft at the Paris Air Show this month. The United Arab Emirates will be the company’s first launch market.