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.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., wears a pair of Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta continues to sink money into the metaverse, anchored by virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.
The company reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday and said that the Reality Labs division recorded an operating loss of $4.4 billion while generating $470 million in sales during the period.
Wall Street was expecting Reality Labs to post an operating loss of $5.1 billion on $316 million in revenue.
The Reality Labs unit is responsible for developing the company’s Quest-branded family of VR headsets and Ray-Ban and Oakley AI smart glasses that Meta develops in partnership with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica.
The company’s Reality Labs division has now recorded over $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020, underscoring the high costs of building VR, AR and other consumer hardware.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in September revealed the $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which are the company’s first consumer-ready AI glasses that include a built-in display and an accompanying wristband with neural technology.
EssilorLuxottica said in its most recent earnings report earlier this month that those AI glasses helped lift its sales in the third quarter.
“Clearly there is a lift coming from Ray-Ban Meta wearables as a product category,” EssilorLuxottica CFO Stefano Grassi said during a third-quarter earnings call.
With Meta’s AI glasses becoming a surprise hit, investors have been monitoring for any signs that the company may be shifting its metaverse strategy.
Meta on Monday said that Vishal Shah, who was leading its metaverse initiatives, is now a vice president of AI products in the company’s Superintelligence Labs division that works on AI.
WATCH: Market volatility reflects AI trade anxiety ahead of Mag 7 earnings.
Bill McDermott, chief executive officer of ServiceNow Inc., during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, US, on Thursday, July 10, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
ServiceNow reported third-quarter results on Wednesday that blew past Wall Street’s estimates, with the company also approving a five-for-one stock split.
Shares rose 4% after the bell.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates.
- Earnings per share: $4.82 adjusted vs. $4.27 expected
- Revenue: $3.41 billion vs. $3.35 billion expected
Third-quarter subscription revenues, which account for the bulk of the enterprise software company’s sales, totalled $3.3 billion and surpassed a $3.26 billion estimate from StreetAccount. Overall revenues grew 22% from the year-ago period.
ServiceNow bumped up full-year guidance, saying it now expects subscription revenue to range between $12.84 billion and $12.85 billion for the year. Last quarter, the company raised FY guidance to a range of $12.78 billion to $12.80 billion.
Like many software companies, ServiceNow is benefitting from the artificial intelligence transformation that’s forcing more businesses to adopt the tools.
“Every enterprise in every industry is focused on AI as the innovation opportunity of our generation,” wrote CEO Bill McDermott in a release. He called the results the “clearest demonstration” that businesses are relying on ServiceNow for these capabilities.
Finance chief Gina Mastantuono told CNBC that the annual contract value for ServiceNow’s AI business is projected to surpass $500 million this year and on track toward the goal set at its investor day to reach $1 billion by 2026.
“The value AI is going to create in enterprise is like nothing that we’ve seen in a very, very long time,” she said. “We have real customers, it’s not just hype, and we have real values and we’re driving real outcomes for those customers.”
Net income hit $502 million, or $2.40 per share, up from $432 million, or $2.07 per share, during the same quarter in 2024. Current remaining performance obligations reached $11.35 billion.
ServiceNow said its fourth-quarter guidance accounts for ongoing U.S. government uncertainty and the recent shutdown. The company expects $3.42 billion to $3.43 billion in subscription revenues.
“Whenever the government reopens, the administration’s continued focus on cost efficiency and modernization aligns directly with our strengths,” she said, adding that ServiceNow’s U.S. federal business grew more than 30% in the third quarter.
ServiceNow’s board also approved a five-for-one stock split slated for the beginning of December. Mastantuono said the split will make shares accessible to more retail investors.
The stock is down about 13% year to date.
ServiceNow year-to-date stock chart.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference following a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee at the Federal Reserve on Oct. 29, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence boom is different from the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s.
“This is different in the sense that these companies, the companies that are so highly valued, actually have earnings and stuff like that,” Powell said, during a news conference following the Fed’s two-day policy meeting.
AI investments in data centers and chips are also a major source of economic growth, he said. In the dotcom era, numerous companies raced to big valuations before going bankrupt due to hefty losses.
Powell didn’t name specific vendors, but chipmaker Nvidia has emerged as the world’s most valuable company, surpassing $5 trillion in market cap. The rally has been driven by the company’s graphics processing units, which are at the heart of AI models and workloads.
However, while Nvidia is generating big profits, high-valued startups OpenAI and Anthropic have been burning cash as they develop and expand their services.
OpenAI has racked up $1 trillion in AI deals of late, despite being set to generate only $13 billion in annual revenue. Anthropic, which is at a $7 billion revenue run rate, last week announced an estimated $50 billion cloud partnership with Google.
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