GM and Cruisel join forces with Microsoft to commercialize autonomous driving
China Automotive News, January 20, yesterday, General Motors and Cruise jointly announced that they will establish a long-term strategic partnership with Microsoft to accelerate the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles. This cooperation will bring together the strong strengths of the three parties in the fields of software and hardware, cloud computing, manufacturing, and partner ecology, to promote transportation transformation and create a safer, more environmentally friendly, and more convenient future travel for everyone.
Mr. Dan Ammann, CEO of Cruise, said: 'Our mission is to create a safer, high-quality and economical way for everyone. In this process, we will achieve technological breakthroughs and establishments. User trust is equally important. Our pure electric self-driving fleet built for shared travel is moving forward on the road to commercialization. As a leader in promoting technology trust and popularization, Microsoft will vigorously accelerate our commercial deployment.'
Cruise will use Microsoft's cloud computing and edge computing platform Azure to fully tap the cloud computing potential of autonomous vehicles and realize the large-scale application of autonomous driving solutions. As Cruise's preferred cloud computing service provider, Microsoft will use Cruise as an opportunity to strengthen industry insights, deepen customer-centric product innovation, and continue to invest in Azure to serve global traffic.
Microsoft, together with General Motors, Honda and institutional investors, will make a total of over US$2 billion in new equity investments in Cruise. This brings Cruise's valuation to $30 billion.
Mr. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said: 'With the continuous advancement of digital technology, we are redefining all aspects of work and life. This includes travel and goods. Circulation. As the preferred cloud computing service provider for Cruise and General Motors, we will help autonomous driving to achieve large-scale development and become the mainstream.'
Ms. Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors, said: 'With the addition of Microsoft, our team will continue to move towards the vision of'zero accidents, zero congestion, and zero emissions' Moving forward. Microsoft will accelerate the commercialization of Cruise's pure electric self-driving cars and enable General Motors to benefit from cloud computing services. This will help us launch 30 pure electric vehicles worldwide by 2025 and develop new ones. Business and service growth.'
In addition, General Motors has selected Microsoft as the preferred public cloud service provider to accelerate its digital business development and develop capabilities such as cloud collaboration, cloud storage, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
General Motors will cooperate with Microsoft to make the business process of the digital supply chain more efficient and concise, increase productivity, and provide customers with new travel services faster.
